The Empire

A poem about a great and yet horrible empire. Contradictions truly are rife in history

The Empire

The Lion, the Jack

The Ships and the Railways

It stretched across 

All of these continents

Endless land

Swallowed up in their tide

From India to Africa to Canada

Where shall the sun set on 

This Vast Empire?

They conquered the waves

Swept them clean of their enemies

First of wood then of iron

The ships of the Empire

Into the depths of Africa

For gold, diamonds, and Christianity

For Queen, Country and Empire

Holding in their hands 

The Maxim Gun

They swept the land of their enemies

The blood-soaked fields 

Beneath which lie endless riches

They bought and sold the children of that continent

And brought them to another

To raise that plant

Which feeds the sweet tooth

Of their far-off masters

Slaves and Sugar

The Empire consumed them

Swallowing them up,

Never to return

They smoked a weed of a continent

The plant of snuff

Brought the Empire there

The endless bounty of the Banks and Capes

All there for the Empire

The inhabitants slaughtered

Or falling prey to disease

God must have given The Empire this continent

Clearing out the “unwanted savages”

And so the empire took the part of America

Not already taken by their competitors

When they turned their eyes East

To the riches of the Orient

India abounded with the products of its labour

China with what they chose to give

India fragmented

China unified

The British conquered the land of the former

But could not make a dent in the latter

So they found a product of the great land of India

From the flowers of the poppy

Peddling it to the Chinese

Until the Chinese fought back

The Empire had grown now

And crushed the great land

Beneath its iron heel

As the Empire dumps its unwanted

On the shores of a distant island

Until they too have become a nation

One colony had rebelled

The Empire looked upon it with scorn 

And could never hope 

To be able to afford

To take it back

And so the Empire

Moved from the shores of that continent

And into the world

And here now as

We look upon this Empire

At the zenith of this power

We praise its power and wealth

The Jubilee fills our hearts with warmth

The stamps show the world

Draped in Red

But that red also has another meaning

For what of the blood of those

The Empire has destroyed?

Annihilated from history?

One threw off the Empire

And became its own Empire

Leaving yet more dead in its wake

This Empire is

Steeped in blood

Oh red

Such an apt colour

And as we look across this blood-soaked world

While travelling

In the ships and trains of the Empire

We wonder

Was it all worth it? 

Was this Empire

Good or Evil?

Author's Note

This Empire is a lot easier to guess the identity of if you want to try it than the poem I posted before this

Reviews

[spence]

I like the way you've described the transatlantic relay race of power. Britain is now second in command as it tries to cling to the coat tails of the USA. The best analogy I heard was by comedian Bill Bailey when he described the USA as a school bully demanding sweets from the other 'children' and parting with a threat of violence once they were plundered- he described britain as the bully's friend who stands behind the USA, waves his fist and says, 'Yeah!'
To the poem though- the chronology is written concisely and accurately, (to the best of my knowledge anyhow), and pulls no punches with its depictions of pillage, rape and plunder attributed to successive Empires of red, (of bloodshed) white, (the predominant skin colour of the powerful) and blue, (the general mood of their victims). Very well said, take care, spence