Graven in stone

[davywavy]

Ed Miliband has announced that he will carve his five election pledges into an 8'x6' block and have it placed in the Downing Street Garden if he becomes Prime Minister.

I barely need to edit.


I met a traveller from Number Ten
Who said: "A vast and graven lump of stone
Stands in the garden. Near it, on the grass,
Half sunk, a shattered promise lies, whose failed,
And lifeless words, and sneer of Fabian scorn,
Tell that its sculptor read the manifesto well
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The policies which lost them and the deeds which failed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Milibandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I had visions of ed balls falling off a ladder whilst editing it at dead of night.

[whiskeylover.livejournal.com]

Once in an election dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Whom on earth one could vote for—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I can say it was in the bleakest May;
And each separate dying day wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished at last for closure; all the parties had exposure
I read their leaflets with composure—until I could take no more—
Waiting for a clever speaker, such as I had heard before—
As they used to take the floor.

But I soon became quite certain, that the bleating and the blurtin'
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
Some will surely be defeating Milliband, the dreadful bore—
But the Tories won't be beating him; just as they failed before;—
A hung parliament and nothing more.”

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, very good. I'll try and think of a riposte :)

[whiskeylover.livejournal.com]

Well, I had planned on ending with something like
"When will I lead a government, which all the people will adore
Quoth the electorate 'Nevermore' "...

But I was tired & it was getting late... :D

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

I was thinking something along the lines of Under Milk Wood.

To begin at the beginning:

It is election, voting day in the small country, hopeless and cross form, the people with their moving X, voters and electors limping back to the slow, ignorant, mathsblind, discredit-covered Labour Party. The unions are blind as moles (though blind they still see their self interest) or blind as Ed Balls there in the treasury pumping the money pump and the debt clock all down to bankruptcy. And all the labour MPs and peers are spending now,

[whiskeylover.livejournal.com]

LONDON. The Election lately over, and Ed Milliband sitting in Doncaster North. Implacable post-election weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the Labour party. Former MPs, undistinguishable in mire. Campaign staff, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. New leadership contenders, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold in initial interviews, where tens of thousands of other disaffected voters have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those policy points tenaciously which lost them the election, and accumulating at compound interest...

[whiskeylover.livejournal.com]

...or indeed: It was a dark and stormy election; the votes for the Tories felll in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when they were checked by a violent gust of windbags which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the workers' movement that struggled against the darkness of Tory dominion...

[(Anonymous)]

You know that Boris got in first with the "Milibandias" reference. I give you credit for the whole pome tho'.

I remember I reacted the wrong way the first time I read that bit of Shelley. I was just impressed that Ramses had left something to remind us of him, unlike the billions of lives that have gone without trace.

I remain confident that Mr Miliband will likewise pass like the rest of the unremembered billions.

D

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder if he's open to offers for it now he won't be needing it. I've got a grand right here for it.