When once the Lion held his crown with law in open hand,
And bled to shape a noble code across a restless land,
There came a veiled and foreign creed, cloaked soft in rights and care,
Its parchment writ in distant tongues, its torch a muted flare.
Not sword, but scroll; not foe declared, but whisper on the stair,
And thus began the closing in of freedoms unaware.
They changed the robes of justice first, from ermine into veils,
They traded common law for rule where ancient reason fails.
The word made flesh was cast aside, the pulpit taught to kneel,
While ink and birch were swapped for chain, and thought became a seal.
The tongue grew still, the press grew pale, the sceptred courts fell mute,
And silence fed on golden fields once rich with rebel fruit.
The mint was purged, the ledgers burnt, and trade grew thin and cold,
For wine was sin, and song was waste, and all but zeal was sold.
The craftsmen's guilds were shuttered fast, the theatre drawn with ash,
The banker’s vault declared impure, the poet's tongue as trash.
Then vanished did the apple’s bloom, the painter’s eye, the choir,
All cast to feed the furnace mouth of envy, wrath, and fire.
The hearth was split by gender’s wall, the bell no longer rang,
And sermons turned from Christ to Law, as state with crescent sang.
The maidens veiled, the statues veiled, the saints defaced in gloom,
And even Christmas lost its name, eclipsed beneath the tomb.
Where once the minster's rose had shone, a new call pierced the sky,
But not of peace; it called the fold to kneel, obey, and die.
Yet still the storm was called “reform,” and still the scribes were paid
To call the fall a rising tide and dusk a dawning shade.
But oaths were made in hidden woods, and scrolls in cellars passed,
And whispers stirred the ancient names from slumber deep and vast.
For those who built the chapel walls still breathed in iron earth,
And Albion’s soul in furrowed field began to stir to birth.
Then cracked the shrines of foreign rule; the Lion bared his teeth,
From farm to forge, the call went out through bitter wind and heath.
The sons of Wessex, Lothian, Gwent, the blood of York and Dee,
Rose not with hate, but hallowed wrath to set the homeland free.
The veterans marched with walking sticks, the youths with flags and flame,
And on each lip was writ again the long-forbidden name.
So learn, O hearts that slumber still, beneath the seventh veil:
That nations fall not all at once, but with the softest tale.
And where the Book is chained and burnt, and silver made to crawl,
There too the tongue is first declared the wickedest of all.
But still within the ancient land the oaken roots run deep,
And truth shall rise though crowns collapse, and tyrants feign to sleep.
(By John Shenton)