FORSAKEN - a ballad
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I wander through familiar trails
   With birdsong in my breast,
A melody within my sails
   And all around me blessed
With dancing color, with prismatic light,
   With beauty to arrest.

These long and winding, these familiar trails
   Once led me to one place:
A safe harbor for all my ails,
   A precious and warm space--
Between your arms, my dearest friend,
   As I thought was the case.

Beneath the shaded, humming trees,
   Whose music thrums from deep,
We'd listen, and I'd sing to please--
   The joy in our hearts did heap
With comforts and with Maiden's life,
   With pleasures I thought would keep;

But something rumbled up from the deep,
   And shook me to my core:
A beast we'd all thought long asleep,
   A darkness to abhor,
And I took to wing above it all,
   To keep above and soar.

You'd lost your wings, though, I'd forgot,
   When you stared into the lake,
When you thought you'd found what you had sought,
   A reflection you'd forsake;
So my dear, the darkness came for you,
   A darkness like a snake.

It garbed itself in shining light,
   A light too bright to see;
It masqueraded all in white
   And called itself holy.
It profaned the rhythms within you
   And gave to you false lee.

All the color bled then from you,
   My friend, and my safety,
Bled you dry until it was through
   And took you away from me;
And the Light then did swallow you whole
   And made a zealot of thee.

Now I search for you within the song
   Of the Forest, of my home;
For your voice here again I long,
   And to find it I will roam
The furthest stretches of the Wilde
   From dawning 'til the gloam.

And now these most familiar trails,
   Filled with melody, sweet rhyme,
Are but small comfort for our travails
   As your colors fade with time,
As the dark serpent strangles you tight
   With promises sublime.