Upon the chalk of Albion’s spine, where beacon-fires once scorched the mist,
The warders slept with rusted blades while zealots kissed a bloodstained list.
The church doors yawned in weeping stone, their knell ignored by civic men,
And minarets like thorns of steel rose silent in the vale and fen.
Where once the law of Alfred stood and Cromwell's trumpet split the sky,
Now judges bowed in paper robes and dared not ask the how or why.
The crescent marched without a drum, its sermons cloaked in honeyed tone,
While Liberty, unarmoured, lay as dust before a foreign throne.
In halls where Langland penned the poor and Chaucer led to virtue’s spring,
Now Sura's veil replaced the scroll and lords of truth knelt to the king.
The verses hissed of sanctioned guile, where speech is craft and craft is might,
"Deceive them where your hearts abhor, if truth would bring the sword of night."
And thus the men of ink and tongue, the scribes who once held tyrants fast,
Were made to chant what they despised and praise the ghosts of freedoms past.
They whispered oaths in lawyered gloss while canon law lay mute with shame,
And tongues that once shaped liberty were cut to match a shariah frame.
The merchant’s bell rang once with gold through Thames and Tyne to Firth and Foyle,
But now it tolled in scrip and loss as trade was yoked to sacred toil.
No wine to bless the wedding feast, no psalm to raise the harvest fair,
But grim injunctions shrouded all, and spice replaced the native prayer.
The pound grew pale, the lender fled, the forge fell cold with idle hand,
For interest earned or meat unclean was cursed by creed across the land.
Where once the shop bore Shakespeare's tongue, now foreign script and veil held sway,
And widows wept for vanished sons whose coins had bought their chains that day.
No sculptor carved the soul in stone, no player spoke on Avon’s stage,
No lass could dance, no lute be plucked, for joy itself was deemed a rage.
The painter’s brush was taxed by code, the poet’s quill was sheathed in fright,
And every book that dared to dream was burned beneath the crescent’s light.
The schoolhouse echoed rote and rule, the telescope grew blind and dim,
For heaven’s lore replaced the stars, and girls were taught to shrink for Him.
Each cradle bound by iron verse, each veil a flag above a tomb,
And genius choked upon its birth within that softly padded gloom.
Yet Albion’s loam remembers still the tread of shield and sharpened spear,
And from the loins of bowmen’s ghosts arose a growl too sharp to hear.
The dead beneath the Roman walls, the Saxon chiefs on fen and field,
Stirred in the bones of silent men who’d sooner die than bend or yield.
The chapels lit their guttering flames, the publican unbarred his door,
And whispered through the winter rain: “This land shall never kneel to yore.”
Though law was lost and Parliament broke, the moor and glen began to ring,
With muttered oaths and smuggled arms and psalms that feared no mullah king.
Beware, ye sons of England’s coast, where mist and memory intertwine,
No tyranny begins with chains, but lullabies and rites benign.
The crescent comes not bearing war, but nods and treaties, gifts and peace,
Till law is shrunk, and speech is hushed, and prayers to Christ are bid to cease.
For every lie that bought you calm, a liberty was carved away,
And every mosque that flattered you prepared the cross for Judgment Day.
Yet still the horn of Alfred calls through hedge and heath, through fire and chill:
The Watch must wake, the hill must hold, or England’s light shall darken still.
(By John Shenton)