There has been a fire over Ancient Albion –
A raging destructive fire
Lit by the Huns, who thought they’d prove
To be our funeral pyre…
But all did not work out as they had planned
For theirs are intellects that do not understand
The Englishman
The lurid flames leapt up on high
Often they seemed to reach the very sky
But down below in every heart
Burned greater fires than Huns could start
On any day
Unlike the infernos Nazis caused,
They were unquenchable, we never paused
To feel dismay:
On, ever on, with our tremendous task we went
With energy that might have been from heaven sent
And onward we shall go, without a backward glance,
Until the fires of freedom bring to us our chance
Of Victory
This poem was written by John Mullis after a fire blitz in London. John was a wartime evacuee to Long Marston who later came to live in the area and published a book of 50 of his poems in 1970.
