ENGLAND MY ENGLAND - Part Two

What have we done to you - England my England?
What yet shall be done to you - England my own?
- with apologies to William Ernest Henley 1849-1903

......... The Young Man responds with the eternal optimism of youth……...

What fool is this who dares of England to complain
When every aspect of our life improves?
No more we dread the threat of foreign chains,
Nor poverty in our cities moves;
No child with crooked legs does walk our towns,
Or sits in rags upon the pavement's edge,
Or suffers with consumption's rasping sounds
With parents helpless to prevent his death.
And freedom to govern one's own fate
Is not impeded by a bullying state.

No longer do tall chimneys belch forth dirt
To foul the fields and blight our very air.
Impenetrable fogs don't cast their murk
On London's streets or England's country fair.
Stafford's potteries and Sheffield's steel-torn mills
That burned the sky above with hideous flame,
Polluting rivers with their effluent ills
Are convalescing from industrial shame.
With salmon breeding once again upstream
And England's landscape waking from a nightmare dream.

Those age-old English barriers of class
And regional accent heralding one's birth
Are now considered relics of the past
And so no longer measures of one's 'worth.'
The waste of talent caused by half the race
Being banished to perform domestic chores
Is rescued now as woman's proper place
By birth control has conquered natural laws.

Those tedious and debasing occupations
Which soiled the lives of many working men
Inherited from years of degradation
By Capital's wealth-creating regimen:
Miners delving in deep squalor;
Chemical workers breathing poison fumes;
Steel rolling-mills with men consumed in horror;
And textile girls condemned to banging looms.
Our improved diet extends our living span
And taller children shows their better health.
Home ownership is spreading through the land
With wider distribution of our wealth.

So England's progress in this current clime
Is setting standards for all future time.

written by Ralph Cradick and recited by Richard Everett-Briggs

....a philosopher contemplates thesis and antithesis.... read on...