Winter withers all the meadow’s flowers,
and the frozen hours
paint the woodlands pale:
as the snowfalls thicken,
lindens cast their stricken
branches stark against the season’s whiteness.
Yet I mourn this barrenness less sadly
than I grieve how badly
Shame and Honor fail:
Honor’s stream runs shallow,
Virtue’s field lies fallow,
no heart seeks to cull the rose of rightness.
The spring restores the leaves and petals to the flowers on the thorn-hedge,
but the man whom wickedness has taken
and who has forsaken
Honor’s holy pledge
walks a path of sorrows,
nor can face tomorrow’s
gleaming dawn secure in manhood’s brightness.
— translated from the Middle High German
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Lo, Oh poet of mine admire;
Speak to the fire;
Converse open flame thine heart dire;
Arch-poet, ballad maker compose lovely lyric rhyme unto me prior;
Ballad singer, balladeer voice still cry;
I ballad monger, idolize beat poet, bucoliast, elegist shy;
Fair epic poet, folk singer gleeman, journey lands,
Idyllist speak unto me emerald skies;
Imagist, jongleur, laureate recite toss the voice bell righteous ringer;
Librettist, major poet, maker, Meistersinger, minnesinger;
Best-loved favored treasured vocal
closest to one's heart preferred chosen
Sightseer mishear appeal reveal wordsmith zeal
Mimic speak life Celtic minstrel bard of Avon, Shakespeare!
12/12/23
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2023©
Bard Poetry
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