When the final flag is flown over these
verdant fields there will be songs lustily
sung of all its once proud glories, now flown.
Accomplishments thought to be set in stone
will sit next to sins with an honesty,
aside all rights and wrongs, all laws and decrees.
The offspring of world striders will be alone
fading from their forebears unseen glory.
In the forgetting, past tales told with glee
will float like newspapers on summer's breeze,
detritus which swirls until finally
there’ll arise ones who would reclaim the throne
But all of their promises will be false,
All their glory stolen from history’s vaults.
Poem by stuartcturnbull, picture from darksouls1 on Pixabay
This poem is one written over the summer of 2022. It is part of a suite of poems that considers UK history and life from roughly the end of the Second World War through to an unknown future.
This poem is a sonnet. It uses a rhyme scheme of ABCCBA CBAABC DD, which is non traditional.
The suite's title is from the opening line of the fourth stanza in William Blake's 1808 poem Jerusalem