The fallen knight

Cheer up friend, echoes the call

Through the ever-blinding fog

As we endeavour to

Search for his soul;

Lost in the quagmire of self- pity

Merely a shadow of his self.

Then we find him sitting

On a gnarled tree root;

A brave knight who once stood tall,

And vanquished the foe who

Quaivered at the mere sound of his name spaken.

Now he lies hunched, finally beaten,

Humbled by the skullduggery

That is this war.

It is a great war, this one

That hath brought empires down,

And a great pile of rubble

Now stands in its wake.

A generation wiped, a civilization uprooted,

Such is the might of this war.

He fingers the rusty blade

Of his faithful sword, that hath served him well;

That hath savoured the sallied flesh

Of many a fallen foe.

He rests his eyes upon the coat of armour

That hath shielded him from many a dreadful fate.

He finds solace in the standard

That once flew high,

With an eagle to the left & a lion to the right

Of a blade of shining gold.

We rouse him out of his reverie.

We remind him that the very root

On which he rests his tired toes

Is full of twists & turns, but

Yet it proceeds unfailingly towards its

Goal. The tree on which he reclines

Lives its life in pursuit of the sun & the sky.

And then, with enormous effort

He rouses himself.

He dons his armour, cleans his blade,

Mounts his valiant steed & Goes off to battle.

Man & beast, riding into the sunset

United as one, against a common foe.

& as we follow this leader of ours,

A mighty gust of wind blows from yonder.

As if the heavens themselves

Spur them on in their courageous mission.

The last we heard of him,

He was in Germania.

And the war- broken soldiers there

Were treated to a splendid sight

(Oh! Woe that we abstained! )

At the crack of dawn

The lights from the heavens cast his

Silhouette in bronze, with the

Scars of war etched in gold.

“Ah! “ Quoth an ancient warrior

“There, truly, walks a God.”

Such was this vision

The fallen, as if rose from their

Graves & were granted new energy

To fight for another age.

A good warrior he was, truly.

Alas! His name was buried

In the sands of time.

But the wind forever speaketh his name.

As it rustles through the glades

And plains of that once-forsaken battlefield.

Its such acts of bravery

That mark the truly worthy

From the swarthy,

For they rise from the ashes and spread their wings

Truly, like the phoenix,

Whose bird-song can heal.

And their shadow encompasses the whole world.

For the biggest tragedy of life is not death,

Nay, it is what we allow

To die within us while we survive.

Let not the flame of ambition die within you,

Nurture, kindle, & tend to it

Until it rages like a blazing fire

And thou shalt achieve thy dreams.

-------THE END-------