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# Rulers Who Neither See, Nor Feel, Nor Know
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/mark-harris-rulers-who-neither-see-nor-feel-nor-know/
- Published: 2018-02-24T15:00:21.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:10:51.000Z
- Description: Clinging leech-like to their fainting countries.
- Author: Mark Harris
- Tags: Art, Drawing, Weekend, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-18 14:37 (2018)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/02/mark-harris-edit.jpg)

Mark Harris, “An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king” (2018), spray paint on discarded mattress (courtesy of the artist)

> ***ENGLAND in 1819***   
>  
> An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,\_\_  
> Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow  
> Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring,—  
> Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,  
> But leech-like to their fainting country cling,  
> Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,—  
> A peopled starve and stabbed in the untilled field,—  
> An army, which liberticide and prey  
> Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,—  
> Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay ;  
> Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed ;  
> A Senate,—Time’s worst statute unrepealed,—  
> Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may  
> Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.  
>  
> **— Percy Bysshe Shelley**