Once roared the North with titan breath, once sang the hammers proud,
Where sons of soot and ironclad hope broke sunrise from the cloud.
The loom, the shaft, the molten flood, the tracks through dale and town,
All bore the stamp of Albion’s hand, her blackened laurel crown.
The train wheels screamed from Somerset to grim Yorkshire’s spine,
The foundries fed a world of trade, the miners carved the line.
But gods of coal and steel have fled, their altars swept and bare,
And those who kept the engine lit now choke on bitter air.
No more the bell of morning shifts, no furnace spits its glow,
The cotton sleeps in rusting spools where clattering looms would go.
The steel mill stands, a tomb of strength, its lifeblood drained and sold,
Its sovereign heat replaced by suits with hearts grown meek and cold.
The engine’s soul was sacrificed upon a banker’s chart,
And trade was bartered overseas, torn from the nation's heart.
Now drones in flats with idle hands click ballots, nod, and wait,
While idle fields and empty docks reflect a vanished state.
Far Cathay burns her coal with pride and casts the world in steel,
She builds the ships, she molds the cars, while Albion learns to kneel.
Her hammers ring where Albion’s stopped, her furnaces still roar,
And what we once called "Made in Britain" walks in shops no more.
She trains her sons in math and code, her schools grow swift and keen,
While here, we blunt the mind with screens and serve the woke machine.
We import hands, but never minds; we preach, but never teach,
And cast the craftsman's sacred art far past the common reach.
What motive moves the ruling hand that breaks the nation's tools?
What phantom logic guides their lips and fills our schools with fools?
They do not seek a thinking folk, but minds too dulled to rise,
Who bow to grants and rations doled beneath a greying sky.
They paved the road from forge to dole, from plough to plastic pen,
And crowned themselves as kings of air while starving thinking men.
For thinkers build, and builders dream, and such men are a threat,
So best to crush the furnace-soul, and leave the people debt.
Yet still beneath the poisoned soil, the coals of memory burn,
And voices of the smokestack age still call for their return.
The wheel may turn, the tide may shift, the tyrants fade away,
If but the sons of England rise and dare to disobey.
Let not the forge grow cold in heart, nor wisdom die in vein,
The land that wrought an empire’s span can yet be whole again.
For though the chimneys crumble now, the spirit waits below,
And steel, once quenched, remembers fire. Let England’s furnace glow.
(By John Shenton)