Inspired, we think, by David J Harding's experience of wanting to shout in Meeting (Eye, 28 March), Barrie Rowson found us this poem which appeared in Inward Light (see http://fcrp.quaker.org/) in 1952, by Myrl Ijams. It is rather dispiriting...

In meeting for worship
With heads bowed low
A sudden shout of 'tally-ho!'
All heads lifted
And all eyes stared
At the mad-cap woman
Who had dared
Scream 'tally-ho'
And oh, the silence after the shout!
But they never asked 'why?'
Or 'what about?'
The sisters and brethren
In sober frocks
Put her quietly into the stocks
And never more till her dying day
Had that troubled woman aught to say

Sometimes in meeting for worship I
Could break the silence
With a monstrous cry
Of 'tally-ho!'
Is this my soul, I want to know -
Or that of the woman of long ago?