Do you remember those mornings after the blitzes
When the living picked themselves up and went on living –
Living, not on the past, but with an exhilaration
Of purpose, a new neighbourliness of danger?
Such days are here again. Not the bansheeing
Of sirens and the beat of terrible wings
Approaching under a glassy moon. Your enemies
Are nearer home yet, nibbling at Britain’s nerve.
Be as you were then, tough and gentle islanders –
Steel in the fibre, charity in the veins –
When few stood on their dignity or lines of demarcation,
And few sat back in the padded cells of profit.
Boiler-room, board-room, backroom boys, we all
Joined hearts to make a life-line through the storm.
No haggling about overtime when the heavy-rescue squads
Dug for dear life under the smouldering ruins.
The young cannot remember this. But they
Are graced with that old selflessness. They see
What’s needed; they strip off dismay and dickering,
Eager to rescue our dear life’s buried promise.
To work then, islanders, as men and women
Members one of another, looking beyond
Mean rules and rivalries towards the dream you could
Make real, of glory, common wealth, and home.
1 The first work of C. Day Lewis since his appointment as Poet Laureate was commissioned by the Daily Mail as part of the “I’m Backing Britain” campaign and appeared in that paper on January 5th, 1968. The campaign, supported by the Daily Mail and the Evening News, began with five typists at a heating and ventilation firm offering to work an extra half day without pay at the end of 1967. Subsequently some firms pegged prices for six months and some directors took a cut in their salaries.