Ode to Albion’s Twilight
by E.M. Burlingame
Beneath the pall of Time’s unfeeling shroud,
Where once thy spires did pierce the vaulted skies,
Now crumbled towers whisper, choked and bowed,
To winds that sing in lost glory’s strangled cries.
Thy marbled halls, where Wisdom held her court,
Lie rent and torn by ivy’s claw and envy’s frost;
Thy hearths where civilization’s glory was wrought
Grow dark and cold, their ashes to the void embossed.
O Albion! Thy sons, soft, weakened in silken sloth,
Dreamed Progress’ hymn had tamed the primal night—
They deemed the wolf had turned to bleating lamb,
And scorned those fangs still veiled in reason’s light.
Too soft the hands that clasp thy storied sword,
Too faint the hearts that nurse thy thunder’s heart;
They now barter Truth for shadows, cheaply bought,
And wake surprised to serpents coiled on Eden’s floor.
Behold! The tempest yet brews with jaws unkind,
Here where barbéd tongues of ancient hatreds hiss;
Great the tides of Chaos, fed again by rot and wind,
Do ceaseless gnaw the roots of all that was and is.
Yet rise, ye remnants of the undrowned flame!
Let scars once more become the sigils of thy might—
Clutch fast the shards of what no steel can quench:
The strength of man unbreakable, blightless and true.
Rebuild thy altars from the ancient stones of yore,
And forge anew the song of valor the stars first knew;
For though the night may claim one’s mortal soul,
The dawn yet fires so the blood of kings—and you.
Survive. Prevail! Let the fire of resolve grace thy veins,
Till Albion’s phoenix rends this shroud of collapse—
Lest all we are and were be ground to dust in chains,
And breath by breath, we be forced to decline away.