The Palace of Pleasure (poem)

[2] Attached to the beginning of the poem is a preface that shows Hunt discussing life in artistic and heroic terms, and he refers to himself when he describes "a Muse, who is entering into public in her sixteenth year, bashful on her first exhibition, and listening with trembling expectation, as she passes, to the shouts of disapprobation or applause that burst from the surrounding multitude.

As Guyon seeks to repent, he is attacked by creatures from hell and the allegorical figure connected to justice:[4] And next him started on the knight, I wot, A most surprising fiend, whose visage pale Was branded all about with dusky spot Made by the fiery iron, heavy bale To him that doth with impious hand assail The laws of righteous Justice; and he hight Foul Infamy, ay driv'n by Woe and Wail, And pointing Scorn of moderation light, And brazen-tongu'd Reproach, ne silent in the night.

[5] In the final moments of the poem, it is Glory who gives him the encouragement to perform his political duty:[6] "Go," sun she, striking her exalted lyre, "Go lift th' oppress'd, and beat th' oppressor low; Go, where sad Justice sees her sons expire, And Tyranny quaffs down the tears of Woe!

[7] In terms of Romantic poetry, Hunt's poem is related to the allegories found in Percy Bysshe Shelley's Queen Mab and The Revolt of Islam along with those in Robert Southey's Thalaba and Curse of Kehama.

[10] Hunt would later rely on the same Spenserian "Bower of Bliss" for the basis of a pleasure garden in The Story of Rimini written years later although he places more emphasis on the sexual aspects in the later work than on the meaning of the scene.

[11] The poem, according to Hunt, "endeavours to correct the vices of the age, by showing the frightful landscape that terminates the alluring path of sinful Pleasure".