CANCELLED STANZA OF THE MASK OF ANARCHY. by Percy Bysshe Shelley: Summary, Meaning & Analysis
This is a brief, cancelled stanza from Shelley's longer protest poem *The Mask of Anarchy*, created in reaction to the 1819 Peterloo Massacre.
The poem
[Published by H. Buxton Forman, “The Mask of Anarchy” (“Facsimile of Shelley’s manuscript”), 1887.] (FOR WHICH STANZAS 68, 69 HAVE BEEN SUBSTITUTED.) From the cities where from caves, Like the dead from putrid graves, Troops of starvelings gliding come, Living Tenants of a tomb. ***
This is a brief, cancelled stanza from Shelley's longer protest poem *The Mask of Anarchy*, created in reaction to the 1819 Peterloo Massacre. It depicts starving workers pouring out of industrial cities like corpses emerging from decaying graves. Shelley removed it and substituted it with two other stanzas, but the image remained in manuscript form until it was published in 1887.
Line-by-line
From the cities where from caves, / Like the dead from putrid graves,
Troops of starvelings gliding come, / Living Tenants of a tomb.
Tone & mood
The tone is dark and confrontational. Shelley isn’t quietly mourning — he’s compelling the reader to confront something grotesque. The imagery is intentionally repulsive (putrid graves, starvelings, tombs) because Shelley seeks to evoke disgust, not pity. Beneath the gothic exterior lies a cold, measured rage.
Symbols & metaphors
- Caves / Graves — The industrial cities are depicted as caves—dark, primitive, underground. When combined with "graves," they blur the line between a workspace and a burial site. The workers never truly escaped the earth; they simply transitioned from one form of entrapment to another.
- Starvelings gliding — The ethereal, effortless motion of "gliding" transforms the workers into mere shadows. It takes away their physical presence and energy, illustrating how industrial poverty has diminished people to almost ghostly lives.
- Living Tenants of a tomb — The oxymoron of living people as tenants of a tomb is the most striking aspect of this stanza. A tenant pays rent and occupies a space by agreement — Shelley suggests that the workers are trapped in their death-like conditions not by chance, but by a social and economic system that benefits from keeping them there.
Historical context
Shelley wrote *The Mask of Anarchy* in Italy during the weeks following the Peterloo Massacre in August 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd of about 60,000 people in Manchester who were demanding parliamentary reform. This brutal attack resulted in at least 15 deaths and hundreds of injuries. The poem was a direct political response aimed at the working people of England. One stanza was drafted but ultimately cancelled, replaced by stanzas 68 and 69 in the final version. It wasn’t published until 1887 when H. Buxton Forman released a facsimile edition of Shelley's manuscript. This stanza is part of the poem that depicts the suffering masses rising up, and its gothic imagery of graves and tombs showcases Shelley's anger at the industrial and agrarian poverty faced by people in Regency England.
FAQ
We can't say for sure, but most people think the two replacement stanzas (68 and 69) are more impactful and fit better with the poem's growing intensity. The imagery in this stanza, though powerful, might come across as too still — more like a snapshot of suffering instead of an urgent call to action.
*The Mask of Anarchy* is an extensive political poem that protests the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, where government forces violently confronted a peaceful crowd seeking voting reform. Shelley employs a series of allegorical figures—Murder, Fraud, Hypocrisy—to symbolize the ruling class and urges the English working people to unite in nonviolent resistance.
A starveling refers to someone (or an animal) who is thin and weakened due to not having enough food. This term is quite old and carries a heavy connotation—Shelley picked it intentionally over gentler terms like "the poor" or "the hungry" because he aimed to make the harsh reality of hunger unmistakably clear.
Shelley employs gothic imagery to present a powerful political argument. He conveys that poverty isn't merely a struggle — it's a form of living death. By likening workers to corpses and cities to tombs, he compels the reader to face the stark moral horror that industrialization and political exclusion inflicted on everyday people.
No. *The Mask of Anarchy* wasn’t published until 1832, a decade after Shelley’s death. This cancelled stanza only surfaced in 1887 when H. Buxton Forman released a facsimile of the manuscript. Shelley’s publisher, Leigh Hunt, had delayed the poem out of concern for potential prosecution.
It’s an oxymoron—living people referred to as occupants of a tomb. Shelley suggests that the workers' conditions are as bleak as death. The term "tenants" introduces a harsh economic twist: they don’t even own their suffering; they rent it from a system profiting off their plight.
The central image — individuals crushed by poverty and economic inequality, living as mere shadows of themselves in cities that thrive on the wealth of others — has resonated throughout every period of industrial capitalism since Shelley first described it. While it originates in Regency England, the message remains relevant across time.