Michael Sturdy

"Taigh na Croiite." Watercolor on cotton bond.

“Ode to the Common Measure.”

Ye ancient charters, speak across the years,
From rivered fields and chambers dark with wax;
Recall the hands that set their names to law
And drew a boundary round unbounded power.
Not blood alone shall sanctify command,
Nor birth confer a virtue not its own;
For Time, that stern examiner of claims,
Has summoned rank before a higher bar.

At Runnymede beside the patient Thames,
The realm beheld a subtle revolution.
No fortress fell; no dynasty was burned;
Yet something greater shifted in the soil.
The ancient dream that lineage alone
Could cloak injustice with a sacred veil
Received its first and memorable wound,
And privilege stood questioned by the law.

The crown was not abolished by that act,
Yet neither stood it wholly as before.
A king remained, but now a king constrained,
A mortal answerable for his deeds.
Thus entered history’s long constitutional tide,
Which wears away the granite cliffs of pride
Not by one storm but by persistent waves
That shape the shore through centuries of toil.

Thereafter rose petitions to the throne,
Not bent in servile fear before a name,
But bearing forth the older claim of right:
That governance must answer to the governed.
The Petition spoke against inherited will,
Against the notion that ancestral power
Might stand exempt from judgment’s searching light
Or purchase innocence with ancient seals.

Then Habeas Corpus raised its vigilant voice,
A sentinel before the prison gate.
It asked not whence a captive drew his blood,
Nor what proud house adorned his family tree.
It asked instead by what just cause he stood
Deprived of liberty beneath the law.
Thus did the centuries refine one truth:
The deed outweighs the accident of birth.

For what is lineage when the years are weighed?
A catalogue of dust and vanished breath.
The grave remembers neither crest nor crown,
Nor keeps account of heraldry and gold.
Beneath the earth all pedigrees grow mute,
And all distinctions fashioned out of pride
Are leveled by the democracy of death,
Whose kingdom knows no privilege of rank.

Yet still mankind erects inherited thrones,
And still the heart is tempted to believe
That worth may pass from father unto son
As coin or land descends through legal forms.
But virtue is no title one may grant;
No charter can bequeath a righteous soul.
The noblest blood may nourish vice and greed
The humblest birth may harbor grace and truth.

What then survives the tribunal of time?
Not ancestry preserved in fading books,
Nor sculpted names upon ancestral stones,
Nor banners weathered by forgotten wars.
The lasting measure lies in chosen acts:
The hand extended where compassion calls,
The burden shared when others stoop beneath,
The word of truth upheld at personal cost.
The centuries themselves bear witness here.

Each charter, writ, and petition joins a choir
Whose theme grows clearer with each passing age:
That law exists to guard the common good,
And dignity belongs to every soul.
The arc of constitutional memory
Bends not toward privilege of birth alone,
But toward accountability of deed.
Therefore let no man boast of ancient names,
Nor claim exemption through inherited grace.

Let every woman, every man be judged
By justice shown and mercy freely given.
For character is forged in daily choice,
And honor grows through service to the weak.
The worth of human beings is not found
Within the accidents that mark their birth.
O ancient charters, keep your watchful guard.
Remind each age that power must answer truth.

Proclaim again what wiser centuries learned:
No bloodline stands above the moral law.
The highest title granted unto man
Is neither prince nor lord nor heir of kings,
But faithful steward of a common world,
Whose greatness lies in how he treats his own.

Thus let the final measure ever stand:
Not what we inherited, but what we gave;
Not whence we came, but where our footsteps led;
Not who begot us, but whom we served in love.
For there the long constitutional stream
Finds its broad ocean and its truest end:
That every soul possesses equal worth,
And every life is judged by what it does.

-- M. Sturdy (June 4th, 2026)