(If The Lions Are Drinking…)

The rending gilted tone 
Of a dire, knell-chime's call.
The eleventh hour hands speak
Before fate's axe should fall.

Tell, who will call for you now?
Radical passing beneath the
Threshold of Traitors Gate.
Drop the Portculi of Newgate
And the yard of London Tower…

Tell, what good are Romantics?
Waving raw blood ink of word steak 
Before the dogs of PM, William Pitt.
How long could your lot hold out before
Muzzled hounds of the Bloody Code bit?

And watermen of the Thames
Sing their warnings out:
"If the Lions are drinking
 London is sinking
 If the Lions are dunked,
 London- is Flooded." 

Warily look over your shouldèr
As you finger your belted cudgel.
Fear adrenalized corpse flower
‘Most dangerous man of Britain!’ 

Rats and Ravens in a tiger-Pitt
Dying democracy knows no difference.
Hung, Drawn and Quartered.
Democrat! French Sympathizer!
Importing Great Terror to a ruling class.
Demolish the opposition by law and tax.

Carry Paine's flag, let your ego orate
Polemic voicings to the beta inarticulate; 
Inspiring masses with your booming lisp
Quaking powers move to behead you asps,

Calling for the hides of Tooke, Hardy and you: John Thelwall!
Where are the powers of your Corresponding Society behind these walls?
Penny-Stankers! Groundlings, All!!
Coleridge's comforts topple and fall
Flat in the shadowed need to forestall
And save one's own skin…

Like the stench of humanity
In a sweltering tube,
The stench of torture clings
To these stone walls.
5 meters of dense brutal labor.

Now you see the piss-poor values 
Born of men of poetry upon Earth?
In this place, what good are 
scratchings of Blake or Wordsworth!?

And the beefeaters of power
Sing their warnings out:
"If the Lions are drinking
 London is sinking
 If the Lions are dunked
 London- is Flooded."

Pen your lines to the Politic editor,
Pen defense to charges as traitor,
Seditious speech, that Britons are
Capable of self-directing the law's arm.

To what end is Parliament needed!?
In a System of Spies and Informers…
Where is the morality of these Tories!?

And when your sideshow speeches,
Mocked the government to the citizen's delight,
How wary did your esquire become?
Your head on the King's block.

So the English rose, demanding your release,
When so badly the State hungered to cut your tongue.
"If discussion be shackled, how are discordant opinions to be adjusted, 
but by tumult and violence? "

Be assured, -these wars are never done…
Measure of wit before measure of sword-
Pèrhaps your exhausted spirit then broke?
Perhaps this was always the ancillary Stratagem in removing your fetters?

And the ravens of the Tower
Caw their warnings out:
"If the Lions are drinking
 London is sinking
 If the Lions are dunked
 London- is Flooded."

Dreams of a westward walking tour,
Promises of Salisbury Plains assuring
Some port free from London's storms.
40 days and nights of rain.

Trudge toward your utopian retirement
Thinking on pastorales in Nether Stowey
Fissures in the enamel of a provincial brain?
Where strains of wit may at long last rest,
In the rolling lavender fields of Sussex,
In the quiet and green blades of promise-

Where morning meadow thrush 
Trill their warnings out:
"If the Lions are drinking
 London is sinking
 If the Lions are dunked
 London- is Flooded."