All that remains; a shadow of the past
A hand carved epitaph on the landscape,
Written in stone, indelibly cast:
Wordless reminder of how worlds change shape.
A novo loco - a place for monks, once
For centuries, a place of prosperity
Gave life and death in all benevolence
destroyed by cannons; a king's temerity.
Its stony ruins, ignored in the meadows
now, by the silently grazing cattle
arches and hollows make nests for the crows
but nothing left of its heavenly chattel
Long in the earth, the bones of its cowled priests
In memoriam, forever, resting in peace.

H. G. Wells

There was a young chap from Woking
Whose imagination needed no stoking
When his aliens attacked
Some took it as fact
Till our cunning lad said, 'Only joking!'

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