The creak of joints, like timbers strained, recalls my youth in canvas bold, When Solent’s tide I dared and claimed, in gaff-rigged hull of oak and gold. We hauled her west on morning's breath, where Needles cleave the chalk-white lee, And ploughed through spray with joy and death both dancing in the open sea. Old hands aloft, young blood below, we chased the western star to fade, Beyond the bay, past Finistère, where winds are sharp and legends laid.

The flags fly high for distant feasts, for idols strange and far, Each crescent praised, each foreign rite now lit by Parliament's star. Yet Canterbury lies in hush, its bells not heard above, For England’s faith is not the faith these leaders speak or love. They speak in tongues of policy, of carbon, race, and trade, But not the words of Christ the King, nor truths our fathers prayed.

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.

In Canada’s wide, frost-bitten land, where poplars touch the sky, The talk grows thick of ballots cast, of truths the newsmen buy. The red-lipped kings of empty courts have ruled a fading span, With velvet hands and dulcet lies, but not the strength of man. They taxed the smoke, they sold the sod, they fed the mines with law, And clothed the land in stranger tongues to hide what folk once saw. Yet still they march with media’s hymn and promise some rebirth, While children dream in borrowed speech, and lose their sense of worth.

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.

The trumpet sounds in Zion’s shade, but Jacob’s sons alone must bleed’ While crescented Cain walks free and full, it’s Abel’s kin who pay the heed. The elders sit in Whitehall’s gate, robed not in sackcloth but in pride, And bid our boys to Babylon, though none the people's voice supplied. No prophet speaks, no Urim shines, the ephod’s gone, the ark forgot’ Yet they conscript from chapel pews, while mosque and minaret are not.

I marched where banners once unfurled beneath the lion’s roar and flame, From desert dune to jungle mist, the crown and creed I bore the same. With bayonet and bitter shoe, I fought where empire drew her line, But now I queue for crusts and pills, while strangers feast on plate and wine.

The coffers bare, the ledgers red, the debt a beast none dare to name, Yet Ursula, with outstretched hand, declares your gold must feed the flame. “A people's purse is Europe's purse,” she hums beneath her practised grin, And all the bankers nod in time, this theft’s not theft if wrapped in spin. From Brussels halls to Paris' steps, the chorus rings in honeyed tones: “The vaults are full, the war drums beat, the people's wealth must build our thrones!” So up they climb on others' toil, with fingers long and eyes like stones.

Four days from Grimsby’s soot-stained quay, where gulls give voice to smokeless skies, We danced atop the green-backed beasts, our keel tossed high where reason dies. The gallant girl, with decks a-slick, would groan and roll, then rise again, Each corkscrew lurch a seaman’s prayer, each crest a hymn, each trough pure bane. With scuppers weeping foamy tears and bows that stabbed the boiling swell, Our engines hummed a weakening hymn, the batteries now a ticking knell, While Albion’s lords, on sunlit lawns, dreamt policy safe in Downing’s shell.

Oh, Greenland lies frozen, and Iceland is lost, as the maelstrom bellows its deafening roar, No diesel to drive us, no power to net, just a corpse of a ship that will fish nevermore. Five days without sunlight, the panels sit dumb, like tombstones adrift on a watery grave, And the storm howls laughter at men who would dare to shackle the sea with the dreams of a knave.

Oh, sing for the mothers who laboured in love, who cradled the land in their gentle embrace, Through tempests of sorrow and torrents of time, their hands built a home full of kindness and grace. Yet cold are the hearts of the lords in their halls, who govern with iron yet honour them not, But richer than gold is the love of a child, and warmer the hearth in a mother’s own cot.

Oh, woe to the whelps in the schools of decay, where thinking is frowned on and facts fade away, Where maths is a mystery, science a joke, and grammar lies gasping beneath Twitter smoke. No Shakespeare, no Byron, no Wilde in their quips, just memes and emojis on half-bitten lips, And should you dare challenge, should questions arise, they’ll cancel your grades and declare you unwise.