An unborn babe
Is a thing of beauty,
But handled roughly
By white-coat clerisy –
For them a lump of cells
Brimming with utility.

Happy is Wales
That no sterile forceps
Broke the womb
Of Blessèd Nonna
In search of youthful
Eye or kidney,
By satanic
Sublimation
Put to scientific
Application.

Happy is Wales
That rather than
A zombie line
Of butchered baby cells,
They have a Holy Man,
A Living Patron,
Saint David of Menevia,
Who prays unceasingly
Before the face of Christ
For all his fellow Welsh.

From the womb he preached,
From heresy he saves,
From sickness he heals;
The bees he blessed,
The land he raised;

Adversaries he disarmed,
African ascetics he adored,
With angels he conversed;
His horse a sea-steed,
His bell a wonder-spout.

Head of the Britons,
Benefactor of the West,
Bright star in the fair
Constellation of saints –

And yet to certain
Technocratic sages
He will always be
A better treasure
As fetal tissue samples
Held in wide-mouth jars
Inside a softly humming
Refrigeration chamber.

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We hope you will join us in The Imaginative Conservative community. The Imaginative Conservative is an online journal for those who seek the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. We address culture, liberal learning, politics, political economy, literature, the arts and the American Republic in the tradition of Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt, Wilhelm Roepke, Robert Nisbet, Richard Weaver, M.E. Bradford, Eric Voegelin, Christopher Dawson, Paul Elmer More, and other leaders of Imaginative Conservatism. Some conservatives may look at the state of Western culture and the American Republic and see a huge dark cloud which seems ready to unleash a storm that may well wash away what we most treasure of our inherited ways. Others focus on the silver lining which may be found in the next generation of traditional conservatives who have been inspired by Dr. Kirk and his like. We hope that The Imaginative Conservative answers T.S. Eliot’s call to “redeem the time, redeem the dream.” The Imaginative Conservative offers to our families, our communities, and the Republic, a conservatism of hope, grace, charity, gratitude, and prayer.

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