A Celebratory Ode on the Abdication of King Charles III – by Tony Harrison (1995)

[It really bothered me that this poem was nowhere available on the internet, despite being around for 29 years. So here it is:]

 

It's not surprising that the Muse has

had to bypass Laureate Hughes

and chooses me to be the bard

to hymn the close of this charade,

and hymn the Crown's demise I will

with this black goose-feather quill

I've saved for ages just to write:

Goodbye! Good riddance, Divine Right!

and anything that still pretends

divinity shapes human ends.

No Fidei Defensor now can guard

the worn-out Church from knacker's yard.

 

 

First with its feather end I'll dust

the eyeballs of the Milton bust

I've kept as a constant inspiration

towards a now maturer nation, Milton,

whose Latin justified 

to Europe Britain's regicide,

with his blind and marble eyes

sheds no tears for this demise.

We only weep we had to wait

 

so long to have an adult state.

Why has it taken all this while

desceptring 'this sceptred isle'?

Between Charles I and II

Britain had a chance she blew.

Britain blew her biggest chance

to be a grown-up girl like France

but history has cried FINIS

and drawn a line at King Charles III.

Britain's watched as waves have swept her

last King with his crown and sceptre

into the tides of change Canute

saw lapping at his well-licked boot.

Though later kings chose to ignore

the breakers crashing on the shore

that leave poor Charles's ermine sodden

with the momentum of the modern.

 

More democratic, more adult

with no mystique of monarch cult,

let's begin by hauling down

the Rs in names that mean the Crown,

the R from every acronym

that's lost its use along with him.

Remove that R that's everywhere!

First, you, my friend (Sir?) Richard Eyre

take that R from RNT

always a sore point with me

so I'm the first to shout hurrah

that the National's free to drop its R.

They claimed the added R would raise

much needed cash much more than plays.

'It gave us dignity abroad'

according to Chairman Rayne (now Lord!)

I beg to differ, au contraire,

we just seem backward everywhere.

All that bowing to the Royal Box

just makes us into laughing stocks.

From now on let our stage creation

be simply offered to the nation

and none of us need now be forced

to be so royally endorsed.

Now work should seem its own reward

to every would-be Sir or Lord

and all those former Sirs and Dames 

will be content with simple names

without a prefix or a suf-.

In a republic work's enough.

Hopefully the day is dawning

when Britons lose their taste for fawning

on Lords and Ladies, Dames and Knights

dubbed by bepurpled parasites

and will demand a Bill of Rights.

A UK with a prefix 'Former'

sends tiaras into trauma

but King-dom's nothing when the King

's been taken under history's wing.

It's probably just British luck

the acronym comes out as FUK!

 

Now finally we've cast aside

the monarch without regicide.

It's 'off with his crown' instead

of, as before, 'off with his head'!

And he's agreed all by himself

to put the crown on to the shelf

where it must for ever stay

except for V&A display.

 

If Britain goes back where she was

and Republicans all flee to Oz

and there's a new ode to be written

to welcome King Charles back to Britain

I rather fear the Royal Muse

will have to go to Laureate Hughes.

An 'Ode on Monarchy Restored'

could make a Laureate a Lord.