The Ruin (Cloth Hall, Ypres)
Long stood this wondrous cloth-hall,
now laid low
by the ravages of time and war,
by the turn of fate,
All who remember its glory
sleep now in their earth-beds,
the wall-stones of giants felled now by weapons,
the glory of old destroyed by those three feared arms-bearers:
death, war,
and disease their great spear-Dane,
stronger in battle than any warrior.
Once rang these stones
with the song-joys of a kingdom
now grown over with mosses,
fallen are the towers
that stood amidst the rise and fall of kings.
Empty are the mighty chariot-roads
and the halls where ivory and gold and the riches of the
world arrived as treasure, where the ring-giver
bestowed gifts,
glittering were the god-groves and
warm the mighty halls of wine-lore, bright the fires,
those who had tended them now
folded into the earth
those strong men of old, splendid in their war-gear,
strong of spirit,
fallen are the fountains and the great
stone-works where streams
gushed forth
2 comments:
Nice! I love the idea of greatness which still pails in comparison to the earth-lore of time ever-after.
yeah, no doubt-- this is based on a version of "the ruin", an anglo-saxon poem. the oldest surviving copy dates somewhere around 980 (and ends as a fragment because sometime in the 1100's someone used that version as part of a work-table, i.e. to saw wood on, and then put a red-hot poker on it, burning through much of the text), but the work itself had been around long before that, probably.
sooner or later the great spear-dane comes for us all.
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