When kingdoms
fail and chaos wins the day,
Though I wear
chains of desolate defeat,
And comrades of
my youth be marched away
To die and sweat
and bow a mean retreat;
When plague shall
wipe from earth the sword and shield
And farmers leave
the lonely plow to die,
The oxen lowing,
kings in unturned field
Insentient ‘neath
pale unfeeling sky;
When all the
world is shrouded with a night
That poetry
itself cannot abide,
An age from which
the words have taken flight
Because the poets
one and all have died:
For you my love I still will always
sing
Till close of time the fire and ice
will bring.
