They scorn the stock from whence they came, and curse the fields their grandsires trod,
They fling the gates to lawless tides and call it virtue, not a fraud.
They kiss the feet of foreign foes, but mock the hand that ploughed their land,
And trade the crown for counterfeit, with coin and power in open hand.
They see the state not as a trust, but as a trough to feed their kin,
And silence those who speak of law, while letting every vagrant in.
The scrolls are burned, the statues fall, and truth is branded hate or crime,
As if the West were born in shame, not struggle carved through toil and time.
In halls once sworn to guard the folk, they praise the mob that breaks the gate,
And treat the rebel as a friend, the patriot as a thing to hate.
The law is twisted into rope to bind the honest, loose the knave,
And still they act surprised to find that love of country makes men brave.
But I, though white of beard and years, have seen such shadows pass before,
When empires mocked their hearth and host, then vanished like a closing door.
The winds that whispered Rome's decline now stir again the aging leaf,
Yet from the east, a fire wakes, a hard-born truth, a wrath made brief.
The torch yet burns in hidden hands, the drumbeat sounds from vale and glen,
And though the courts may speak in lies, the soul remembers who we’ve been.
So let them scoff, and spend, and fade, we’ll bide beneath the rising star,
For Albion, and all the West, shall rise again from where we are.
(By John Shenton)