English Majors and Poets...

[Arravis]

In the Forgotten Realms timeline it mentions:

1230 DR The Year of the Long Watch: Elf-maidens out for a pleasure outing are never seen again. This becomes the basis for the epic poem "The Long Watch".

I would like to have some sort of handout that has the poem (or a part of it). But, first, I have to find a suitable poem. My own ability at poetry borders between laughable to pathetic, so it's not something that will do. Anyone have any suggestions of an existing poem I can use for this? Thanks guys!

-Arravis

 

[Templeton580]

*

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

If I was at home, I'd probably be able to find something more specific, but off the top of my head, I can think of some possibilities.

Tennyson's Lady of Shalott might work, but it's a little long and easily-recognized. There's a book of Yeats' romantic poetry that might hold some good choices. Wilfred Owen has a lot melancholic poems about people going away never to return (but most of that is about WWI and soldiers marching off to death and ruin).

Lord Byron has some poems that might be adaptable.

In fact, here's something from Byron that might work (It's untitled, so it could be "The Long Watch").

So we'll go no more a- roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a- roving
By the light of the moon.

 

[nakia]

Much of The Waste Land is very suitable for in-game use. I've poached parts of it before, and unless your players are lit majors or poets, they probably won't know.

Yeats is good as well.

 

[Remathilis]

http://www.monadnock.net/poems/eloisa.html

Seems to have the flavor your looking for...

BTW: Wasteland, great poem. I've used the "fear in a handful of dust" line as a cryptic warning from a group of druids once...

 

[Arravis]

Wow, some great suggestiosn guys! Here's what I have so far... it's from The Two Towers, the Song of Nimrodel. I changed it to fit this a bit better. What do you guys think?

Elven-maids there were,
Shining stars by day:
Their mantles white were hemmed with gold,
Their shoes of silver-grey.

Stars were bound upon their brows,
Lights on their hair
As sun upon the golden boughs
In Semberholme the fair.

Their hair was long, Their limbs were white,
And fair they were and free;
And in the wind they went as light
As leaf of weirwood-tree.

Beside the falls of Erevan
By water clear and cool,
Their voices as falling silver fell
Into the shining pool.

Where now they wander none can tell,
In sunlight or in shade;
For lost of yore was Erevan’s home
And in the forests strayed.

The scouts of Semberholme
Beneath the forest eaves
Awaited them, and await them still,
Beside the tearful Semberflow.

But from them has come no word,
And to Semberholme
No tidings Elven-folk have heard
Of the scouts long in watching for them evermore.

---

The end needs work still, but it's bette I guess.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'd go with the Byron, myself. It's less well-known, doesn't sound like JRRT (which is a good thing, since there's a LOT of bad fake JRRT out there in RPGland) and fits very well.

 

[Arravis]

Some of you are mentioning poets, but not specific poems (or parts of poems). I'm fairly uneducated in such things (my degree is in Graphic Design), so I wouldn't know where to start within the entire works of a poet.

 

[tf360]

Here's a couple of well-known epic poems that you might be able to mine for the verse you're looking for:

Edmund Spenser: Fairie Queene
Thomas Dryden: Absalom & Achitophel
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Alexander Pope: Rape of the Lock

The last two are probably the best especially the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner given the subject matter you're looking for.

Specific passages in the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner include:

Day after day, day after day
We stuck, nor breath, nor motion
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean
Water, water everywhere
And all the boards did shrink.
Water, water everywhere
Nor any drop to drink.

One after one by the star-dogg'd moon
Too quick for groan or sigh
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang
And cursed me with his eye.
Four times fifty living men
And I heard nor sigh nor groan
With heavy thump, a lifeless lump
They dropped down one by one.

 

[Wayside]

(the line in bold...man, that's great stuff).

It is, in the context of the epigraph.