Poem: The Olympians

Those fresh-faced boys and girls,

Mounting the podium with honour

As the union flag unfurls.

They dived, they swam, they cycled .

They tamed the unruly waves.

It seems that Brittania rules them still

Through these latter-day young braves.

But where did they all come from?

-Not from palaces, rich and grand

But from the mill-towns and steely cities

That are all across our land,

Where their grandsires laboured long and hard.

These children of earthy blood,

How they have justified that toil!

How they have made it good.

And if their forebears could see them now,

Wearing their medals of victory,

The bronze, the gold and the silver,

How proud those sires would be!

Our arms are about their shoulders now,

But when the cheering subsides in finality,

Grant that they may return to us safely,

To lives of obscure tranquility.

Rosanne Stinchcombe

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