...and then a man rode through the lines bearing a white flag.

[ananda]

49. Truth, liberty, and love!

These names shall not die as long as they remain in our hearts.
This line from Shelley's Prometheus Unbound stands out for me
in these dark days of a return to tyranny and what Prometheus
also calls the "thought-execution" of tyrants.

Weirdly enough, I recently read Walter Scott's Lay of the Last
Minstrel with Mark Twain's excoriation of Scott in mind. Then,
the same week a man by the name of Walter Scott is wrongly
shot and killed by the police. Now it's really on my mind, burned
so to speak. Anyhow ...

Shelley certainly beats Walter Scott by a wide mile. While Scott can be enjoyable to read, he is jejune and jingoistic in his glorification of war, misguided chivalry, and tribal values. While Scott’s narrative read rather well in the tradition of gothic and medieval romance, reminding me a bit of Longfellow, Shelley's Prometheus reads as a modern and mature masterpiece that defies all limits of place and time, evoking all tyrannies and the ways of tyrants past, present, and future. Both works have elements of the gothic romance; but while Scott's is childish, proving dangerous in its abillity to seduce the minds of southern racists and slaveowners, Shelley's work appeals to our higher and better natures, our long history of standing up against tyranny and the abrogation of human rights. We descendants of the old south and white privilege could thereby benefit greatly from a re-examination of our cultural forebears in this respect.