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The Felling of The King

For those who have read Çaço, Man of the Morning Star this poem is easily understood. For those who have not, it stands alone. One need not know the story to read this poem.
For the curious (and among poets I trust there are many), it tells the tale of the death of King C’arcontine, Claire’s grandfather. Having been tricked into a war he did not want by his mad son Carl, the King is left to the mercies of The Man. For the archivists among you, the helm the King wears is the oldest artifact in my story and belonged to Adama, the first man (created in the deeps of time by Mik-lac-lor) though there are none in Lurien who know this.
And so, the alliterative poem The Felling of the King.

(Please forgive the overlarge glossary, but I did not hold back my vocabulary)
Basilica; a church, Bruit; clamorous rumor, Cabalistic; of or pertaining to the occult, Casque; helmet, Chancrous (adj.); lesions of infectious disease, Descant; melody above the basic melody, Dilatory; slow/tardy, Dolorous; anguish/pain/grief, Ephemera; transitory/of little significance, Epicene; having characteristics of both sexes, Eld; age, Eldritch; sorcery, Febrile; of or characterized by fever, Fugacious; transitory/fleeting, Fugue; a musical form, Eld; age, Gnosis; knowledge, Grume; viscous blood/ a clot, Lethean; a state of forgetfulness as if caused by the River Lethe, Narcosis; state of insensibility, Nihilistic; rejecting all religious and moral principles, Numen; in Roman mythology a presiding spirit, Panegyric; a eulogy public and elaborate, Panurgic; universally skilled, Procelous; stormy, Puerile; childish, Sanguinary; of blood, Septuagenarian (septuageni); a person between the ages of seventy and eighty, Talion; the legal principle of making the punishment correspond to the crime, Temporal; worldly as opposed to spiritual/of time, Vagary; an unpredictable or erratic action, Venal; corrupt/able to be bribed, Vespiary; the hive of the wasp.

The Felling of The King
Set forth by Dennis, the Bard of Feenstra
as told him by Balin the mad, Lord of Argowend

Now list, good souls, to my lament of late High King Tur ~ C’arcontine.
‘Twas by his son Prince Carl betrayed, with Demon haunted, base and bold design.
When Septuageni sallied forth suppliant to suspicious guile,
his tell of ruse, told but half weened, sought talion in deeds febrile.

~ ~ ~

All laud to Legions westward, bearing law unto the east
and bar’brous foes bewildered at their soon so barren feast!
Surfeit upon the riches raised for rake of Mogul Kings.
To arms! Against a savage steel by son supplant that rings
more brightly than the beaten bronze that bloodied backward wars.
From far afield in heat they came to fleece the western shores.
A gauntlet not yet galvanized o’er goodly years long past.
Naught less suffices! Lord and Liege, must look to Fate as cast!

~ ~ ~

Unto the watchful, wasted lands The High King and his fellows walk.
Unto the marsh macabre anew and deep Clæme Moordwynloch.

The burnished brightness of their arms, no more betrayed by light,
men camouflage and cloak their step and creep with stealth by night.
A feral beast, the road behaves pugnaciously as builders toil.
Thought mastered by the Monarch’s will, the make swift monster hides in soil.

The King has sworn they shall not fail for losing sight of home
and so their path is close patrolled and packed by hand with loam.
Then widely branch the thousands, armies braced for bestial war ~
this foe has never numbered so in nine hundred years of lore.

The High King fights a foe prepared! He finds them wanting nerve.
He feeds them myth and majesty and magicks he’ll preserve.
Thru scores of battles bravely beard, their yield is not in doubt,
but on a mound called Fisk a Fisk, The King finds those devout.

Prince Carl has lured predacious men of pale alliances
and gifted them a glut of steel to guarantee their insolence.
A bribed, malicious mercen’ry, embed with men of malcontemn.
A rabble rousing with no chief, rampaging Legion’s one~ with ten!

As thornstalk ‘neath the Monarch’s scythe the savage disunited fail.
Sans loyalty, the lawless hordes are lost in unforeseen travail.
But those there are united by the theft of kinsmen kept as thrall.
Vendetta values vengeance most and asks no wage to rape and maul.

The primitive was pacified in past affronts habitual
by Demon Knights of Discipline and callous, Death Imperial.
Yet newly armed in numbers grown, more nearly nuisance were they deemed.
But on the mound called Fisk a Fisk, The King finds zealotry undreamed.

Above the marsh and moor ‘twas mold, a mountain for this level land.
‘Tis here the Coastal King is come to view the crush and stretch his hand.
The small plateau’s six hundred span so measure ‘twixt each sloping side
and though ‘twere drubbed by rancid rain, reveals the pitfalls foemen hide.

In deluge on its cratered crux does C’arcontine pause conqueror.
Once barren, ‘tis bewildered by the babble of his privy score.
“Taboo is terror in the mind primeval!” So The King is told.
And sooth was in the sound of it, for never were the savage bold,
the puerile witch or wizard ripe nor wanton derelict venal
found willing, vital on this bench. The viewpoint’s vantage cede by all.

Long superstitious souls have seen what carnage may be wrought their lives
by bestiality that bides beneath its honeycomb of hives.
Gore lusting gods of ephemera, garbed bleakly in irrelevance,
Fell here too long ago forgot, whence fleeing days of permanence.

Who dares debauch of death to stride the pock marked mesa is naive.
The names within the numen’s nest know~ better men are slain than leave.

The High King’s war now warrants end and found he is by haughty will.
He trusts to terror felt of foe shall vacant leave the temple hill.
In victory alas, the veil is lift that once a vanity
concealed of lofty C’arcontine~ The King is come with only twenty three.

Now, with him here are cunning Knights, commanders and those men at arms
entrusted with their Lord’s own life. With loyalties to bear all harms,
yet brash, benighted arrogance betraying without bartered price~
as ‘neath the mound called Fisk a Fisk wait fearful men of sacrifice!

Prayers panegyric~ preyed upon! ‘Tis God’s True Hell these wraiths prefer,
for those the nihilistic know are souls made null as though they never were.
A roar reverberates above The High King’s rust and silver mane.
It masks the murmured hum below as does the dank malefic rain.

From far away, a baleful bass, beholden, calls an answering row
and with it leaps a lancing strike of lightning from the Earth below.
Then from veiled vespiary cells burst vile, tormented, çhancrous men.
A brace of burly youth, all blind, each driven by a primal ken.

Their naked onslaught so unnerves the Knights, they cringe aghast a trice.
The loathsome look of leprous hide sears craven, those cold veins of Northern ice.
Unarmed they be, yet with a strength surrendered of their savage gods.
They cling and clasp to wait the Knights while careless the uneven odds.

From swollen tongues, a tongue as old as Hades chants full laced with tear.
It calls the Demons forth to feed. It fills the King’s Good Knights with fear.
Sword drawn cleaves skull, blade severs limb, the tribesmen splash when struck upon.
Yet, never numbers seem to wane. Narcosis rules The Mailed Icon!

Nine bodies to each badgered Knight, but thrice that buries by design
and to the mound called Fisk a Fisk is felled The High King C’arcontine!

The deluge would devour him! The Doom of King! His folly rife!
Now, forth the flight fugacious hums! Small gods to seize The High King’s Life!
The fleet lived hornet, wasp and fly were forms embraced when first they Fell.
Outcast with Heaven’s hackneyed least, 0f no account to Him in Hell.

As banshee epicene are they, tri~wingéd beasts as large as boys.
So seldom do the shameless show they shriek as waifs besetting toys.
Temporal is a king of men! To torture such as he delights!
With lowered barb, three score descend~ the dainty delectation fights!

Then from the pulsing mass of men the voice of sovereign mast’ry roars!
‘Tis everywhere at once ‘twould seem and tow’ring o’er the tempest soars.
“Ye Hellspawn creatures~ back from me! Ye shall not crush this King with ease!”

The sightless slaves, unhearing, quail! Knights sanguinary, from their knees,
are marshaled malice heeding song of Majesty behind The Helm!
Doom’s faceless silver casque he’s donned and from its depths The High King’s realm
is manifest before the mob of monsters in a descant chill.

Its daunting, eldritch destiny renamed on death of Christenwill,
no kindle flame of history doth crackle lore of famed Corinthiom.
But that it found Carl Fan the First, no tales yet say of where ‘twas forged or from.

“Ye Gods of gore,” The High King cries, “I’ll dip in thee my gorging blade.
Mayst have me in The End, but deem~ too high has been the pauper’s price you paid!”

And such The High King’s scathing song, the fiends of Hell do stay their flight.
Voracious though the vermin be, they hover in the vast, procelous night.
“To dol’rous at my feet diseased, I offer Death’s release from thee,
but for thy whoring of their souls, I’ll hound thru Hell’s Eternity!”

Then as one man, the noble Knights raise swords unto the Heavens nigh
and with the thrust a thrash of light is followed by a thund’rous sigh.
It wakes from wasting waters near as searching for the faithful proud.
‘Tis bearing down upon the mound and branching to a brackish cloud.

With pity for the poignant men, whose upturned faces plead for peace,
their storied steel falls skilled and clean. King’s mercy shall dogmatic anguish cease.

Amid the grume infectious gore of Godforsaken eastern youth,
King C’arcontine, contemptible, sets forth divine judgmental truth.
“Thou lowly and so loathsome made, look unto me~ I am thy end!
Come craven ghouls, your King commands, thence back to Hades I shall send!”

Once brazen and belligerent, now fearful of bedevilment,
fiends hold their distance, dip and dive. Sadistic, puzzled rage is pent.

The magic of Corinthiom doth magnify the Monarch’s will.
These names of nothing, nowhere, naught; these creatures of lost void and nil,
cannot resist, reject, refuse the bruit of long dead King whose curse they own.
Against desire, down they wing, to face a Doom delayed long sown.

But ere they reach proud Panurgic, the pale sword of The House of Fan,
a whirl of wind wards all away. It gasps and fumes with all The Sins of Man.
The lonely, leaden cloud churns low, as heinous priest o’er sacrificial dove,
then to the mound called Fisk a Fisk, black lightning flashes from above!

It breaks the crude basilica behind the men with ebon flame.
The windflaw eddy ravages with rubble, rain and smold’ring paper shame.
A fiery vortex fed by vague and shallow nests of vagary.
Nigh round the hill, the hive swirls down, concealing wreck of nightmare Knights need see.

The King and all his startled men surrounded seem though none assail.
Their swords begird His Majesty, a wall of mighty Lords in mail.

But what they seek is at their feet as first one, then a fourth and more~
the blind and severed heads begin to bray! Their faces moan from filth and gore
to voice cold tones of arrogance. A cadence cruel, inhuman, gross
with malice and malignancy affecting in the Knights dark chords morose.

And from the lifeless faces foul, now issues forth a vile and cursing fog.

“Thou petty king and poorly made, Behold! ~ I am thy future, dog.
Your son hath heard me summon him as did thy sire Christencor.
Now, by my gnosis know his fugue naive~ the cause that led him lease his wife a whore.”

Once lucid, now struck lethean, The King is loathe to move as in his mind
the melancholy of his muse no longer masquerades behind,
but flows forth from his ancestry and plays a fugue of ancient times.
A cabalistic song of blame and dilatory duties, debts and crimes.

Corinthiom, the casque of Eld, is cast away and now his sword
he levels at the men he loves. The King perceives each gleaming Lord
doth represents damnation’s blight~ the rot of Destiny profound,
while from the mound called Fisk a Fisk is heard a fierce and flagrant sound!

A laughter Harsh, Cold, Cruel and Grim is taunting so to break Man’s Heart.
With Panurgic the Proud and skill unmatched, The Patriarch rends faithful friends apart.

His baleful sough of agony wails blasphemy that boils the sky.
‘Tis greater than The Helm could sound though terrible The Will that try.
The High King’s last lament is lost, for none could list upon the shrine,
the doleful shrine called Fisk a Fisk where fell The High King C’arcontine.

These tales are told me in good trust, yet trembles he when queried more.
Good Balin, Lord of Argowend, brought back The Helm he rescued sore
and tells to me the tale… it told to him.

Ç

Style / type: 
Structured: Western
Review Request (Intensity): 
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Review Request (Direction): 
What did you think of my title?
How was my language use?
What did you think of the rhythm or pattern or pacing?
How does this theme appeal to you?
How was the beginning/ending of the poem?
Is the internal logic consistent?
Last few words: 
I was waiting for a discussion alliteration in the rhyming workshop before posting this, but since we will be moving on to something new (I hope) without broaching the subject I thought I'd dare another big post. This is my only attempt at alliteration to date and would love to hear anything on it.
Editing stage: 

Comments

...this format will not allow my ceasura's to be included, so the lines run together inappropriately tight. There should be a pause in the middle of each line as per tradition. wesley

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

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author comment

Your vocabulary is truly amazing, and this poem reads and
times out in seemingly perfect rhythm, great poem read aloud.
The only problem I have with it is the archaic tone, which makes
it difficult for me to follow the story, but that is my problem.

The alliteration works well in keeping the rhythm, you have put
a lot of work in this and it should be pointed out,
thanks for posting.

Richard

I agree with Richard's assesment of your poem. I had to read some parts twice to understand. But in its own this is a work of art.

always, Cat

*
When someone reads your work
And responds, please be courteous
And reply in kind, thanks.

This one is a little more important to me than most as I think it is the most sophisticated thing I've produced. wesley

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Learn how, teach others.
The NeoPoet Mentor Program
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author comment

I couldn't read all this in one setting. I'm tend to stick to shorter writings because my eyes tire out really fast and i lose interest.
I would suggest lines of paragraphs, no spacing, with spacing between each paragraph. This way when I do read long writings, I don't tire out, struggling to finish, and at the same time lose the meaning that keep me wanting to read more.

*Collaborative Poetry Workshop* American Version of Japanese Poetry ~ Renga ~ Haiku, Senyru, Tanka.

Neopoet Community

this is written in a very particular format. Complete with ceasuras that the font here won't let me keep (the breaks in the middle of the lines). It's my first attempt (and only) at an alliterative poem and though intricately connected to my epic, it stands alone in many ways. I understand about tired eyes. My glasses just keep getting stronger and my eyes more pooped. wesley

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Learn how, teach others.
The NeoPoet Mentor Program
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author comment

I found that all fonts don't play well with every web page. So experimenting with formats to see what works with a particular website can and often do make you post reader unfriendly.
With work you will find a format here you can work with that you can claim as your own style . I simply stick to what is offered until others are implemented that will work to a preferred taste.

*Collaborative Poetry Workshop* American Version of Japanese Poetry ~ Renga ~ Haiku, Senyru, Tanka.

Neopoet Community

first, the flow is fluid and easy with the exception of a few words here and there that have 4 or more syllables. Might just be my stumble, though.

I had very little trouble following the plot despite not reading the small dictionary you left. Would have preferred a fuller description of the characters, land and its surroundings. Given the time period, it is not easy to paint the scenery.

But my most important critique would be that I felt like there were changes in tense. Whether this is intentional or not was not obvious to me. but the feeling of the change made me question myself on what I was reading. Did I read that correctly? the flow of the words was eloquent and needed very little attention as you have stated before, the poetry takes care of itself, but the story had minor hiccups due to this perceived time shift.

All in all it was an easy and enjoyable read and these comments may be of minor Consequence when considered in whole with the big ass poem.

Thanks for allowing me to share my thoughts.

Scott

Scott

The changes you noticed in tense could be very real. I am presently editing the larger work in an attempt to repair that long held problem of mine. I have not reached The Felling of The King, so that you noticed many of them does not surprise me at all. Easily fixed when I get there. As I said (and this is over two years old) nothing is finished. Ever.
The characters and circumstance are of course easily related to if you read ÇAÇÔ, Man of the Morning Star, epitasis, Canto 1-12 or so. The adventure tale doesn't need that, but the nuances of story and character do. Why C'arcontine is there in the first place, where he is, the nature of the magical helm and most importantly who The Man is.
Some of the meter discrepansies may be differences in our pronunciation, but this was also one of the first poems I wrote where I did not hold myself to a metronomic rhythm. I allowed myself the luxury of writing what I liked.
I thank you for reading it and hope it makes you want to consider alliterative poetry. I think your style would mesh with it quite well. At the very least it would be an honorable experiment.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Learn how, teach others.
The NeoPoet Mentor Program
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author comment

Would this be in addition to writing strictly in dactyl for a year?

Give me a full definition of alliteration and a topic. I am game for anything

Scott

Scott

... the Greeks (Homer, Sappho) and the Romans (Virgil) wrote alliteratively in Dactylic Hexameter (heroic verse).
Alliteration can take many forms, but the most common occurs when a minimum of three words in a line of poetry begin with the same consonant sound. Note I said "sound". Not necessarily the very same consonant, but the same vocal sound. They also should alliterate on a stressed syllable, but this is not in granite.
Less than three is not alliterative and more than say, five becomes a little goofy. Some poets over the centuries (Carroll comes to mind) have written entire lines with the same repeating consonant sound, but this only works in humorous poems. Drama can't support it.
"Beowulf" is alliterated. Also "Paradise Lost" (Milton), "Sir Galahad" (Tennyson) and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (Coleridge). My personal favorite is the unfinished "Narn I Chin Hurin" (The Tale of the Children of Hurin) by Tolkien.
Assonance (repetitive vowel sounds) and Consonance (repetitive internal consonant sounds) are also forms of alliteration.
I'm curious to see what you come up with and how easily. Not everyone can write alliteratively regardless how much they practice. It tends to be an innate skill. I think you likely could.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Learn how, teach others.
The NeoPoet Mentor Program
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author comment

interestingly enough I read the Coleridge piece last night after a discussion in the chat room.

Ok, so now I have the definition. Would you happen to have a topic for me?

Scott

Too late the hour to this poem ascertain
I'll shall later return to said verse again.............damn, now you've got me writing that way lol. But I Shall return when I have enough time to give this due thought..............stan

As for a topic Scott, although alliterative poetry can be used in any subject it has been traditionally the voice of the "adventure" poet. The Illiad, The Oddyssey, Virgil's Aenied, Ovid's Metamorphosis and on. Read Beowulf. It is strikingly dull, but being the oldest English language poem extant it is important.
Try a joust. Just the conflict.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Learn how, teach others.
The NeoPoet Mentor Program
http://www.neopoet.com/mentor/about

author comment

to earn a Nobel in poetry
none have got it yet
as I understand
you may be the first
except Rabindra NathTagore
for his translation

loved

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