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Description
In feather-gold and finery
She hurtled from the vaulted sky
To tend the errant souls and sigh
Her throttle-throated melody -
And the creatures of heaven would bow and weep
As with lilted lullabies she drew sleep
From hallowed skies to glassy eyes
And spurred her larksung elegy.

The storm and sunlight rippled down
And clad her aureate pennons bright
Sixfold in the tiger-blue of flight -
Her wing-tips tore and stitched and spun
Time and space - and with such an art
She snatched the breath from body apart:
And as they slept her song she kept:
Did the lyre-layéd Halcyon.

In god-tempered blaze she left them blind,
'Til facéd by sharp burning white
And sunny-silver through the night,
She was blinded now herself in kind.
Her coverts buckled underneath
And her lustre bound the purple heath
In a filigree of morning grey
And her strange song carried on the wind.

Shot down from her lofty home
Of snow and sky, the fallen star
Lay by brazen-breasted Hademar.
And stippled in starlight and gloam,
Veined with sylvanite and serpentine
Was spread the golden-plumed ensign
Of Praelius‘ child, the dark and wild,
Dragged from the earth‘s grim catacomb.

„How can I let such grace be slain?“
She said - and through death‘s dark panoply
She piped a silvered melody,
And breathed life through his lungs again.
With his ravaged chest now woven round
In the splendid strains and threads of sound,
The hoar-frost‘s sheen on the gold-and-the-green
Thawed from his breast as in autumn rain.

Their brilliance rivalled plenilune
And shot the blue-naped sky with light
And robbed the hills and rifts of night.
Then as from fresh-firecoals hewn
In hexed-and-hawkwinged majesty
Came the war-wrought lord of sanguinity.
And in dark-eyed-fire and molten ire
His presence stripped her throat of tune.

„How dare my servant grant a thief
The heavens’ chalices so fine
Of sweet-sung life and the heart‘s bloodwine
To give him from my wrath relief?
My child lies in cloistered stone,
Felled, felled by him alone -
And by sunspun lances and cruel dances
He let slip the hound of war to grief.

„The weight of sin and gallantry
Is not in the balance of thy choice:
I burnished up thy gilded voice
And gave wings of dawn-weft grace to thee -
If thou with such faithlessness repay
My love and be so led astray,
Let this plain ne‘er hear thy song again
Lest thy soul take flight in errantry.“

Thus he put the weight of nebulae
On her fretted web of notes so frail
That should e’er she sing her throat would fail
And utter her last mournful cry.
How monotony swept every note!
And how no silv‘ry song would slake her throat -
How now she lay in insufferable grey
Of syllables stripped and sighed.

Her wings hung heavy with verdigris
And with spun silver tarnishéd:
By her were warriors no longer sped
To halls of glitt‘ring antimony.
And there she wept as silently
As morning dew; and so tenderly
That to tears it drew the man who slew
Wyverns of bloodspake savagery.

From the skies she drew her garments fine
As though spinning them from starlight pale:
A shift and surcoat of fishes‘ mail
And a samite of soft sunshine.
Round her silk-clad willow-waist
Brilliant jewels were daint’ly laced
In delicate hues of liquid blues
‘Bove a girdle of dragon-spine.

The moons themselves were tarried then
To bless her love with lunacy
And wed her with an eulogy.
In the florid-facéd world of men
The paladin donned helm and habergeon -
His steed he decked in caparison:
To the gods he cried for his feathered bride
And that her voice be known to him again.

He lifted up her gossamer veil
And crowned her head in elfin-gold:
And so set off on journeys bold.
On a swan-necked boat they loosed their sail
For rivers of strange silver-green
On whose banks were cities never seen -
To where every tongue was spake and sung
For to save the Halcyon‘s tale.

They passed the horizon‘s diadem
And the gates of a seeward star:
Past forgotten worlds and lands afar
And the kingdoms which emblazoned them.
There ancient beasts and fallen saints
Hummed and cut her throat‘s restraints
For their lily-sail and her filmy veil
And the moonstones on the hem.

A tempest rocked them on their path
With arrows fletched with frost:
She roused her wings and bore the cost
Of her mighty father‘s wrath.
He spun her throat around in threads
Of steel and stinging spools of lead
No song nor trill had she uttered still
Nor a silvered girlish laugh.

Arcanus sent them down a chart
Of inky waters mirror-bright
Of tears of gods and ancient light
And sweet golden wines of a saintly heart.
He sent them to a land that told
Of stolen knowledge aeons old:
Of deities slain and born again
And set from the holy apart.

They landed soon by eventide
Of a clock which knows no morning-break,
Only the stillness of a crepuscular wake
Where dead gods in double shadows hide.
They moored and met them on the beach,
The curséd ones with riddled speech,
With spears of gold, there, thousand-fold,
Dragonfly-winged and serpent-eyed.

The servant of knowledge bore his lance
And mounted fast his destrier
With flaming hoof and sunny hair
And frothing at the bit. „Advance!“
His pauldron was of wyrm‘s wing
And whorls of rosy-gold - he‘d sing
To his lord to bless his sword
And spur his battle-dance.

His battalion was stalwart: the bulwark of the skies -
A handsome army he led there:
A horse and lady oh so fair:
There awaited her demise,
In bittersweet and throbbing song,
The freedom for which she‘d yearned so long.
To the skies she rose to meet her foes
And steal the lights in their sparkling eyes.

Bartizan-broad were their shields and plate
With rims of burnished steel:
They were quick and feathered in the heel
And darted on wings odonate.
Their foils were enamelled bright
In opalescent lunar light:
And in their arms they bore fifty score
Great partizans ornate.

Clad then in the green and pink
Of treasures maritime,
Brave Hademar lanced them line by line
'Til the coral was blue with ink.
The dragon‘s wing he held above -
And beside him his sweet, soundless love
Caught in her wings the sun and spun
Soft darkness round the rink.

But they did not fear the sun-steed‘s fire
Nor the gilt-barbed bluey night:
They feared not the dragon-gold so bright
And whirred their way up higher.
With long-necked spears of malachite
Through her wings they pierced to burning light
And struck her groom with wyverns‘ plume
And celestial arrowfire.

The Halcyon rose with gold abreast
On her pinions tattered thin;
She hurled her light-hewn javelin
At their gleaming helmet-crests.
Their armour crumpled underneath
And sparks flurried 'cross the sheath:
She spared not one, and the baleful sun
Scorched white their bones‘ eternal rest.

She held now the hero‘s head
On her bloodied silken thigh:
And - fading now - he made to lie
Against her girdlestead.
She laid his head on cottonflow‘r
With laurels strewn about his bower:
Ros‘ries of light and garlands bright
Adorned his resting-bed.

She uttered now her parting words:
The first morning‘s symphony
Of the home-and-heartsick valkyrie
Sped the wild and faithless fyrd
And called upon her master‘s ruth.
Praelius had mercy still - he gave his oath
To grant great Hademar his life - and yet his wife
Sung sadly as a snaréd bird.

Her song filled the hero‘s eyes and ears
With colour and with sound so sweet -
He knelt and rose to shaky feet
As rapture swept away his fears.
Her voice resounded straight and strong
As falcon-cries and eagle song:
Against her trappings taut she fought
And threw her lay out far and clear.

The harpstrings blesséd once and cursed
Tightened then, and blazing light
Spilled forth from the keen metallic bite
With ev‘ry dawning, glist‘ring verse.
And with all the strength that she could muster
She rang a note of such glorious lustre
That liquid light poured infinite
From her breast to rippling pools of mirth.

And from where the sweet ambrosia fell
Sprang the blossoms of some godly spell:
She knelt and on the ground she lay
Where strange stars were her canopy.
And the Halcyon knew no tomb nor grave
As she was borne across the gentle waves:
The creatures of heaven bowed and wept
As she so peacefully there slept
Ne‘er to die as in the song
Of river-banks she‘d live long.
And she‘d know not fear nor pain
And soon she‘d see her love again:
For she was sped then to the other plain
Of silent songs and golden rain.

Description
In feather-gold and finery
She hurtled from the vaulted sky
To tend the errant souls and sigh
Her throttle-throated melody -
And the creatures of heaven would bow and weep
As with lilted lullabies she drew sleep
From hallowed skies to glassy eyes
And spurred her larksung elegy.

The storm and sunlight rippled down
And clad her aureate pennons bright
Sixfold in the tiger-blue of flight -
Her wing-tips tore and stitched and spun
Time and space - and with such an art
She snatched the breath from body apart:
And as they slept her song she kept:
Did the lyre-layéd Halcyon.

In god-tempered blaze she left them blind,
'Til facéd by sharp burning white
And sunny-silver through the night,
She was blinded now herself in kind.
Her coverts buckled underneath
And her lustre bound the purple heath
In a filigree of morning grey
And her strange song carried on the wind.

Shot down from her lofty home
Of snow and sky, the fallen star
Lay by brazen-breasted Hademar.
And stippled in starlight and gloam,
Veined with sylvanite and serpentine
Was spread the golden-plumed ensign
Of Praelius‘ child, the dark and wild,
Dragged from the earth‘s grim catacomb.

„How can I let such grace be slain?“
She said - and through death‘s dark panoply
She piped a silvered melody,
And breathed life through his lungs again.
With his ravaged chest now woven round
In the splendid strains and threads of sound,
The hoar-frost‘s sheen on the gold-and-the-green
Thawed from his breast as in autumn rain.

Their brilliance rivalled plenilune
And shot the blue-naped sky with light
And robbed the hills and rifts of night.
Then as from fresh-firecoals hewn
In hexed-and-hawkwinged majesty
Came the war-wrought lord of sanguinity.
And in dark-eyed-fire and molten ire
His presence stripped her throat of tune.

„How dare my servant grant a thief
The heavens’ chalices so fine
Of sweet-sung life and the heart‘s bloodwine
To give him from my wrath relief?
My child lies in cloistered stone,
Felled, felled by him alone -
And by sunspun lances and cruel dances
He let slip the hound of war to grief.

„The weight of sin and gallantry
Is not in the balance of thy choice:
I burnished up thy gilded voice
And gave wings of dawn-weft grace to thee -
If thou with such faithlessness repay
My love and be so led astray,
Let this plain ne‘er hear thy song again
Lest thy soul take flight in errantry.“

Thus he put the weight of nebulae
On her fretted web of notes so frail
That should e’er she sing her throat would fail
And utter her last mournful cry.
How monotony swept every note!
And how no silv‘ry song would slake her throat -
How now she lay in insufferable grey
Of syllables stripped and sighed.

Her wings hung heavy with verdigris
And with spun silver tarnishéd:
By her were warriors no longer sped
To halls of glitt‘ring antimony.
And there she wept as silently
As morning dew; and so tenderly
That to tears it drew the man who slew
Wyverns of bloodspake savagery.

From the skies she drew her garments fine
As though spinning them from starlight pale:
A shift and surcoat of fishes‘ mail
And a samite of soft sunshine.
Round her silk-clad willow-waist
Brilliant jewels were daint’ly laced
In delicate hues of liquid blues
‘Bove a girdle of dragon-spine.

The moons themselves were tarried then
To bless her love with lunacy
And wed her with an eulogy.
In the florid-facéd world of men
The paladin donned helm and habergeon -
His steed he decked in caparison:
To the gods he cried for his feathered bride
And that her voice be known to him again.

He lifted up her gossamer veil
And crowned her head in elfin-gold:
And so set off on journeys bold.
On a swan-necked boat they loosed their sail
For rivers of strange silver-green
On whose banks were cities never seen -
To where every tongue was spake and sung
For to save the Halcyon‘s tale.

They passed the horizon‘s diadem
And the gates of a seeward star:
Past forgotten worlds and lands afar
And the kingdoms which emblazoned them.
There ancient beasts and fallen saints
Hummed and cut her throat‘s restraints
For their lily-sail and her filmy veil
And the moonstones on the hem.

A tempest rocked them on their path
With arrows fletched with frost:
She roused her wings and bore the cost
Of her mighty father‘s wrath.
He spun her throat around in threads
Of steel and stinging spools of lead
No song nor trill had she uttered still
Nor a silvered girlish laugh.

Arcanus sent them down a chart
Of inky waters mirror-bright
Of tears of gods and ancient light
And sweet golden wines of a saintly heart.
He sent them to a land that told
Of stolen knowledge aeons old:
Of deities slain and born again
And set from the holy apart.

They landed soon by eventide
Of a clock which knows no morning-break,
Only the stillness of a crepuscular wake
Where dead gods in double shadows hide.
They moored and met them on the beach,
The curséd ones with riddled speech,
With spears of gold, there, thousand-fold,
Dragonfly-winged and serpent-eyed.

The servant of knowledge bore his lance
And mounted fast his destrier
With flaming hoof and sunny hair
And frothing at the bit. „Advance!“
His pauldron was of wyrm‘s wing
And whorls of rosy-gold - he‘d sing
To his lord to bless his sword
And spur his battle-dance.

His battalion was stalwart: the bulwark of the skies -
A handsome army he led there:
A horse and lady oh so fair:
There awaited her demise,
In bittersweet and throbbing song,
The freedom for which she‘d yearned so long.
To the skies she rose to meet her foes
And steal the lights in their sparkling eyes.

Bartizan-broad were their shields and plate
With rims of burnished steel:
They were quick and feathered in the heel
And darted on wings odonate.
Their foils were enamelled bright
In opalescent lunar light:
And in their arms they bore fifty score
Great partizans ornate.

Clad then in the green and pink
Of treasures maritime,
Brave Hademar lanced them line by line
'Til the coral was blue with ink.
The dragon‘s wing he held above -
And beside him his sweet, soundless love
Caught in her wings the sun and spun
Soft darkness round the rink.

But they did not fear the sun-steed‘s fire
Nor the gilt-barbed bluey night:
They feared not the dragon-gold so bright
And whirred their way up higher.
With long-necked spears of malachite
Through her wings they pierced to burning light
And struck her groom with wyverns‘ plume
And celestial arrowfire.

The Halcyon rose with gold abreast
On her pinions tattered thin;
She hurled her light-hewn javelin
At their gleaming helmet-crests.
Their armour crumpled underneath
And sparks flurried 'cross the sheath:
She spared not one, and the baleful sun
Scorched white their bones‘ eternal rest.

She held now the hero‘s head
On her bloodied silken thigh:
And - fading now - he made to lie
Against her girdlestead.
She laid his head on cottonflow‘r
With laurels strewn about his bower:
Ros‘ries of light and garlands bright
Adorned his resting-bed.

She uttered now her parting words:
The first morning‘s symphony
Of the home-and-heartsick valkyrie
Sped the wild and faithless fyrd
And called upon her master‘s ruth.
Praelius had mercy still - he gave his oath
To grant great Hademar his life - and yet his wife
Sung sadly as a snaréd bird.

Her song filled the hero‘s eyes and ears
With colour and with sound so sweet -
He knelt and rose to shaky feet
As rapture swept away his fears.
Her voice resounded straight and strong
As falcon-cries and eagle song:
Against her trappings taut she fought
And threw her lay out far and clear.

The harpstrings blesséd once and cursed
Tightened then, and blazing light
Spilled forth from the keen metallic bite
With ev‘ry dawning, glist‘ring verse.
And with all the strength that she could muster
She rang a note of such glorious lustre
That liquid light poured infinite
From her breast to rippling pools of mirth.

And from where the sweet ambrosia fell
Sprang the blossoms of some godly spell:
She knelt and on the ground she lay
Where strange stars were her canopy.
And the Halcyon knew no tomb nor grave
As she was borne across the gentle waves:
The creatures of heaven bowed and wept
As she so peacefully there slept
Ne‘er to die as in the song
Of river-banks she‘d live long.
And she‘d know not fear nor pain
And soon she‘d see her love again:
For she was sped then to the other plain
Of silent songs and golden rain.