Beneath the tavern’s smoke-stained beams, where ale and argument once rose,
There creeps a nameless shadow with the patience of the tide;
It chills the hearth, it dims the lamps, it listens where each free voice flows,
And lays an unseen finger on the lips of those inside;
The landlord sees the candle-flame bend low against the draught,
While laughter dies like seabirds when the winter squall is wrought.
A parchment waits like winter frost upon the tavern door,
Its letters black as ravens, its warnings cold and thin;
And every jest that once would wake the room is weighed once more,
As though some unseen magistrate were measuring each grin;
The harmless word becomes a spark, the argument a brand,
And fear goes round the tables with a ledger in its hand.
O Albion, where the fire once burned beside the public way,
Where sailor, clerk, and labourer could fiercely disagree,
What spectre now has entered in the darkness before day,
To haunt the crowded alehouse and patrol the tongue of thee?
The fog creeps through the doorway; the shutters groan and strain,
And voices once like thunder fall silent as the rain.
Yet speech is like the ocean, once unleashed, who shall command
The wind that fills the canvas or the tide beneath the moon?
A chain may bind the mariner, but not the distant strand,
Nor still the bell that warns a ship beneath the stars at noon;
Beware the quiet harbour where no dissenting lantern gleams,
For liberty may vanish first in places lit by dreams.
By John Shenton