The Guildhall clock chimes
Eleven times this special day,
A great silence descends as
The two minutes tick away.
On parade at the Cenotaph,
An old man among old men
(Where did the years go for
In my mind I’m young again):
Not in best battledress
Or even Regimental Blues
But I’m booted and suited
With not quite bulled shoes,
And the old drill moves come back
So i manage to get them right
But age won’t quite let me stand
To attention, back ramrod straight.
Mixed in with the younger ones we old
Men marched with swagger and pride
Through the applause of the crowds,
Who lined the streets on either side.
For each of us in our way
Have walked that special walk
And we all still today
Can talk that special talk.
With pride and emotion we accepted
From those crowds at the parade
On behalf of those long dead
Recognition of sacrifices made.
I shall not march again, this
Time I just needed to appear
To show my respect in this
One Hundredth Anniversary Year
I wont tell you the stories he has told me,
or the reason why for weeks and months
he couldn’t sleep.
About the walk around the corner,
he kept walking round that corner,
walking round that corner
for days and months and weeks.
That isn’t my story to tell you, only his;
but I can tell you that he walks around
that corner through his days
and through his weeks.
I can tell you that he marched them home
leading from the front,
right down through the Guildhall
to the sound of thudding drum.
I can tell you that he marched all those
young boys home.
All of them, but one.
London’s Guildhall, John Lilburne is frogmarched in
A man Cromwell considered a friend,
To stand before him accused of high treason
His actions against parliament to defend
As radical leader of the ‘Levellers’
John opposed Parliament fervently,
With his clandestine printing network
Speaking out of its tyranny;
Power, John Lilburne argued
Belonged with the common man,
His pamphlet ‘Agreement of the People’
Defined how, in the ‘Levellers Plan’.
In ‘England’s New Chains Discovered’
He urged soldiers and citizens, ‘unite-
Reject the rule of the Grandees!’
He was arrested and charged with mutinous incite.
Cromwell brought him to the Guildhall
Amid the strictest security
Troubled his trial would cause civil unrest,
Such was John’s popularity
Although eventually acquitted and exiled
He lived the rest of his life a marked man,
And our constitution, today, owes its birth
To the ideals of his ‘Levellers Plan’.
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