But the revolution, at first successful, falls prey to a counter-revolutionary revanche. The tyrant Othman is captured in his palace, deserted by all except "one child, who led before him/A graceful dance: the only living thing/Of all the crowd, which thither to adore him/Flocked yesterday" (V.21). Shelley's imagination here shows an ability, if not to empathise with, then to create scenes which evoke the pathos of, fallen despotism. The rebels call for Othman's blood:

        Then was heard — ‘He who judged let him be brought
        To judgement! blood for blood cries from the soil
        On which his crimes have deep pollution wrought!
        Shall Othman only unavenged despoil?
        Shall they who by the stress of grinding toil
        Wrest from the unwilling earth his luxuries,
        Perish for crime, while his foul blood may boil,
        Or creep within his veins at will? — Arise!
        And to high justice make her chosen sacrifice.'
                        (V.32)

For Othman, substitute Gaddafi or Mubarak, and these have been in recent weeks the natural sentiments on the streets of Alexandria and Tobruk.

But, in a fit of idealistic clemency, Laon persuades the revolutionaries to spare Othman's life. Othman responds to this generosity in the Shelleyan way of despots, by summoning the poet's favourite villains — that is to say, monarchs, prelates, and their attendant lackeys — to his aid:

        For traitorously did that foul Tyrant robe
        His countenance in lies — even at the hour
        When he was snatched from death, then o'er the globe,
        With secret signs from many a mountain-tower,
        With smoke by day, and fire by night, the power
        Of Kings and Priests, those dark conspirators,
        He called: they knew his cause their own, and swore
        Like wolves and serpents to their mutual wars
        Strange truce, with many a rite which Earth and Heaven
abhors.                          
                            (X.7)