We’ll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgement of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the songI’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled againThe change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the foe, that’ all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain’t changed
‘Cause the banners, they all flown in the last warI’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
No, no!I’ll move myself and my family aside
If we happen to be left half alive
I’ll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lieDo ya?
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
There’s nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnightI’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
No, no!YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
Which being interpreted by John Milton means,
New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ Large
This is the way that Milton put it a few hundred years before Pete, Roger, Keith and John.
Because you have thrown off your Prelate Lord,
And with stiff vows renounc’d his Liturgy,
To seize the widowed whore Plurality
From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorred,
Dare you for this adjure the civil sword
To force our consciences that Christ set free,
And ride us with a Classic Hierarchy,
Taught ye by mere A.S. and Rutherford?
Men whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent,
Would have been held in high esteem with Paul
Must now be named and printed heretics
By shallow Edwards and Scotch What-d’ye-call.
But we do hope to find out all your tricks,
Your plots and packing, worse than those of Trent,
That so the Parliament
May with their wholesome and preventative shears
Clip your phylacteries, though bauk1 your ears,
And succor our just fears,
When they shall read this clearly in your charge:
New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large
Milton wrote in the same type of climate as the ‘Who.’ Each era was marked either by revolution or the prospects for revolution. Each era revealed the hypocrisy of those who wanted to take over.
Milton, writing after the English Revolution was saying that the presbyters, like the Anglicans before them, were a ‘new boss that was the same as the old boss’ in terms of wanting to enforce a particular brand of cultural orthodoxy.
Poor Milton, if he had only known what kind of money he could have made putting his sentiment together with a guitar.
