The jester’s art, the barbed aside, once danced on Britain’s lips,
Where satire stung and pithy turns sank empires with their quips.
A glance, a nod, a measured pause, the gentry’s finest sword,
Now drowned beneath the hashtag’s howl, and memes that seek reward.
Where once the ink of masters flowed in long and arching line,
Now fragments rule the classrooms bare, with neither form nor spine.
They teach no verse, no layered clause, no tangled, teasing thread,
Just bite-sized chunks for starving minds, where Milton’s ghost has fled.
Ideologues in robes of grey know not a jest from jeer,
And cannot tell a truth in jest from something said in fear.
They wield the code, but miss the grin, and brand the bard as base,
For irony to them is sin, and doubt a threat to place.
Yet still the soul of Britain walks where chuckle meets reproof,
Where schoolboys twist their Latin roots beneath a stable roof.
And though the tongue lies bruised and bent, the spirit will remain,
For when the rain falls hardest down, the jest shall rise again.
So plant the lamp in younger hands, and pass the guarded flame,
Let tutors rise who still can parse the jest within the name.
Though ink runs thin and tongues grow shy, the well is not yet dry,
The mind that learned to jest with grace shall never wholly die.
(By John Shenton)