When I was but a sapling in the morn of my life's day
An enterprising architect came down St Pancras way
He'd dreamed he'd draw fine churches, all with neo-Gothic flair
But wound up moving bodies in the smoggy London air.
The folk who hampered progress had to be raised from their sleep
And, reinterred - quite rev'rently - in Finchley's graveyard steep.
And Thomas Hardy, full of Wessex peasant-yeoman whim
And having also quite a share of neo-Gothic grim
He took away the stones which once remembered Cockney dead
And stacked them in a fan shape round my growing form instead.
As time went by I waxed in size and grew around the stones
remembering those poor commuted Midland Railway bones
and Hardy, back in Wessex, grew to his immortal fame
Though poets, being mortal, they all go to death the same
And so one day he came back up to London, loud and brash
But he was quiet - for just like me, he was now wholly ash.
But, mortals, know that death will bring down even mighty trees
Especially when prone to catching ash die-back disease*
No longer will I quiver in this Camden churchyard bare
Nor hiss when west winds whisper hints of Wessex heights so fair.
And so my shady life is o'er - but hearer, know this true
At least I wasn't cut down to make way for HS2.
* I don't think it did, but it's a a nice rhyme.
Nice!
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