evilrooster ([info]evilrooster) wrote,
@ 2007-09-27 01:15:00
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Entry tags:dragon, dryad, gryphon, naiad, narrative, phoenix, pixie, sonnet, undine, unicorn

The Dragons Vanished First
The dragons vanished first, one day at dawn,
A close-packed mass of wings and teeth and tails
That voicelessly, just rustling its scales,
Crouched, launched itself, and in a flash, was gone.
The gryphons, barren since the hatchling blight
Around the eggless phoenix gathered near.
So when it flamed, they too began to sear,
Then sprang aloft and burned to ash midflight.
The dryads withered, and their trees fell down;
The unicorns their pearly horns all shed;
Beneath the autumn leaves curled pixies, dead;
And undines taught the naiads how to drown.
You humans mapped the world, despite the cost:
That you be found, the rest of us are lost.


Originally posted on Making Light.




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Famous Poet
(Anonymous)
2008-06-08 09:32 pm UTC (link)


Your brief invigoration of the "Here be dragons" motto is brilliant. i found it accidentally on "Making Light" while searching for a source of "map is not the terrain"; then i spent a few minutes trying to GOOGLE the dragon poem's true source only to realize that it's an original. It feels like it was written by a famous poet, maybe Yeats being playful? It's too damn good to come from an ordinary person! So i congratulate you and your genius!

Later, Jake

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Re: Famous Poet
[info]evilrooster
2008-06-22 10:56 am UTC (link)
Jake,

You made my week with that comment, though I was too busy to log in and say so at the time!

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[info]starcat_jewel
2009-03-01 04:16 am UTC (link)
Scanning down back entries, I found this. I wrote a poem on the same theme some years ago, for an SCA contest -- one of those "they give you a line and you write a poem around it" things. If you want to put this up on ML, I'll post mine in response.

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[info]evilrooster
2009-03-02 07:44 pm UTC (link)
Unfortunately, I have already put it on Making Light, back in 2007. Here, in among a series of dragon poems we were playing with.

Which is not to say that you shouldn't post your SCA poem on ML. Quite the contrary, I think you should. Then tell us the line you were given, and see what we get back!

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