🕰️ Word Count: 530 Words 🕰️
What doth light the fair blossoms budding bloom?
In vestal fields, verdant cast, sheathed in dew;
Rose, lillies, foxglove, under shade of moon,
Bees give a pollen'd chase between the hues;
The meadowlark calls, chimes to another;
In early dawn, mice seek shadows and climb;
Deer walk along, a fawn seeks its mother,
While o'erhead the hawk circles, biding time.
Stirring are sentinels along the wall,
As weary servants tend to dappled mares;
Hark, from beyond, a doting queen does call,
shaken from fright in her blanket of hares.
The sun seeps gently, new the waking day
My duty curs'd, in nature I remain.
Do not these tepid days grow e'er longer?
Left, abandoned, by the toll of the bell,
Now forcing me to forever wander,
Enchanted, bewitched, by your wintry spell.
How cruel is thine rosy intention;
Dashed, as though thin blades carving atop ice;
Your reflection in snowy suspension,
A wintry portrayal of our new life.
How foolish to be trick'd by a white fox;
The future I dreamed was a snowy lie;
Your empty chair sits, and does naught but mock;
Tears freeze as snowflakes on the lake I cry.
Longer still grow the tepid days of spring;
Relic of paling love, that wicked thing.
Life is but a story wild, though what now;
Far from Britain's shores, keep my ardent post;
The land of emperors past, do tell how,
Among strangers the duke does naught by boast.
When life is a question of lock and key;
Wax seals for secrets, hushed works ne'er spoken.
Young joy obscured, only duty to see;
A body, hollow, hallowed, waits broken.
And yet, like Lazarus it is reborn;
Quiet morning, after end of bloodshed;
Entombed, without a soul left to mourn.
Arise, a remade body for your head.
Thou story to continue evermore;
Deathless, timeless, a new world to explore.
To be a woman, craft from Venus hand;
Though befitting the title of duke, sir;
Long rests the estate, sleep in my homeland;
Awoken by fairer sex, simply her;
Oh, how strange one doth feel to truly be;
Chaste, yet a glance of thy flesh does excite;
Pursued by suitors who seek to own me;
Though mild, still their feeding hands I will bite;
But revel I do in their attention;
This new role confuses me, and leads astray;
The former life bleeds through with contention;
Scraps left hanging to my clothes edges as fray.
I ask; what makes a woman so reviled?
This absurd station that drives many wild!
With alluring voice oft heard as bird song;
Crimson lips, flowers, though guarded by bee;
Nights dark, reticent conversations long;
Only you, stalwart, at my side to see.
Should she be as dainty as a flower,
Or him, stately, rugged as an old oak;
Bookish features, with candlelight to scour;
How lovely thy ink'd words, yet seldom spoke
Entangled, wrapped in a neat bow with silk;
Blushing cheeks, vitality, out of breath;
Touch lingers; I wish you unlike your ilk;
Sun rising, dawn, a triumph against death.
Yet songs fade, as time's march will surely do;
Notes ring hollow, disappear the morn's dew.
My nature curs'd, in duty I remain.