"Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things" is an essay by Percy Bysshe Shelley published in 1811. The work was lost since its first appearance until a copy was found in 2006 and made available by the Bodleian Library in 2015. The anti-war and anti-imperialist work was intended to raise money for the radical Irish journalist Peter Finnerty, who had been imprisoned for libeling the Anglo-Irish politician Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, whom he accused of mistreating United Irish prisoners. The work is a precursor to The Masque of Anarchy and "England in 1819".

The work was advertised in the March 9, 1811 issue of the Oxford University and City Herald. The poem was dedicated to Harriet Westbrook: "To Harriet W[est]B[roo]K, this essay is most respectfully ascribed by the author." The title page contained an epigraph from the opening of Juvenal’s satires: Nunquam ne reponam/Vexatus toties? "Am I, who have been outraged so often, never to respond?" The essay was written "by a gentleman of the University of Oxford" whose proceeds were to be used "for assisting to maintain in prison Mr. Peter Finnerty, imprisoned for a libel". It was published and sold by B. Crosby and Company, headed by Benjamin Crosby, in London. The title page contained an epigraph from the 1810 The Curse of Kehama by Robert Southey.

Shelley gave one copy of the poem, which was published as a twenty-page pamphlet with a Preface, Notes, dedication page, and Errata page, to his cousin Pilfold Medwin, who took it to Italy. It remained lost for 204 years. It was the 12 millionth printed book added to the Bodleian Library in 2015 when its contents were made available after its purchase. The work was published anonymously as by “a gentleman of the University of Oxford”, and was only attributed to Shelley 50 years after his death. Shelley was 18 at the time he wrote it and a freshman at Oxford University.

The 172-line poem, in pentameter rhyming couplets, criticizes the British government, lack of freedom of the press, corruption, the Napoleonic War, and poverty in Britain. Shelley attacked the government, established religion, the Peninsular War, imperialism, and the monarchy. He attacks the “cold advisers of yet colder kings” who “coolly sharpen misery’s sharpest fang ... regardless of the poor man’s pang”.

In the preface, he states that the poem may appear as “subversive to the existing interests of Government" to those "who do not consider with sufficiently accurate investigation". The goal is to induce reform that would alleviate poverty and abolish persecution by "gradual yet decided intellectual assertions". Shelley opposes force because that is an assertion of power and strength and does not entail reason and rationality. He asks whether "the deprivation of liberty" is not the "deepest, the severest injuries?" Shelley calls for reforms and limits to the government: “A total reform in the licentiousness, luxury, depravity, prejudice, which involve society”.

The poem opens with a description of carnage and ruin on the battlefield: "Destruction marks thee! o'er the blood-stain'd heath,/Is faintly borne the stifled wail of death." He asks if “rank corruption” shall “pass unheeded by”, mourning how “Millions to fight compell’d, to fight or die/In mangled heaps on War’s red altar lie”. "The sternly wise" and the "mildly good" have all gone to the "unfruitful mansions of the dead." Despotic governments foment wars for the benefit of a select few: "Fell Despotism sits by the red glare/Of Discord's torch, kindling the flames of war." The quest for fame, wealth, glory, and pride blinds everyone to the human costs and suffering of war, regarded as "legal murders". Shelley uses Personification to illustrate the progress of the war: "Fell Ambition o’er the wasted plain/Triumphant guide his car". War and Glory are in the ascendant while Freedom is expiring.

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had resulted in turmoil in Great Britain. The British government under Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger had raised taxes to support the war against Napoleon and had cracked down on the opposition and radicalism. Although he had died in 1806, Shelley impugns his legacy: "Pitt lends to each smooth rogue a courtier's smile." Spencer Perceval was the Tory Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1811 when the poem was written. He was a conservative who endorsed a rigorous prosecution of the war against France which resulted in widespread poverty and dissent on the home front. He was assassinated in 1812.

He castigates the ministers and officials in a monarchy: "Ye cold advisers of yet colder kings/To whose fell breast no passion virtue brings/Who scheme, regardless of the poor man’s pang,/Who coolly sharpen misery’s sharpest fang,/ Yourselves secure." They achieve fame and obtain the spoils of war while the people they rule bear the costs and are impoverished. They must be confronted and exposed: "Oppression’s venal minions! hence, avaunt!"