Let Easter come with golden bud, with thorn and bloom upon the bough,
For He who rose in garden tomb still walks the fields of England now.
Though kings forget the stone once rolled, and parliaments no longer kneel,
The daffodils know what it means, and robins sing what priests conceal.
They lit the lamps for foreign fasts, they knelt before a borrowed creed,
Yet turned from Mother's gentle hand, and left her table void of seed.
The bells were mute on Sunday past, no psalms for womb or matron's grace,
But laws were passed to scold the tongue that dared to speak of Albion's place.
For every word that dares offend the idols of this present age,
Is seized and tried, while jesters grin, and prophets rot in prison's cage.
Yet none shall hear our cries for wrongs, no judge will weigh our wounded pride,
For truth, if clad in English cloth, is cast like leper’s rags aside.
The veterans walk in coats grown thin, their medals sold for bread and fire,
While strangers dine in council homes and praise the lords that men admire.
These men once bore the lion’s flag through storm and shell and foreign flood,
Yet now they watch, with silent grief, as foreign hands inherit blood.
But lo! the brooks begin to break, the lambs are born, the frost is fled,
And still the first shy cuckoo calls where once our fathers fought and bled.
The earth remembers what we’ve lost, the thorn still blooms, the tomb still bare,
And though the steeple stands ignored, the risen Christ is truly there.
So let them feast on foreign gods, and let them crown the winds of change,
For we shall walk the Easter fields, though Westminster grow cold and strange.
The stone will roll, the sun will rise, the birds will sing despite their sneer,
And Christ shall speak through robin’s song: “Take heart, I still am risen here.”
(By John Shenton)