Le Lament du Barde Maudit

Beneath a weeping sky and winds of mournful song,
He wanders, steeped in grief, where time seems drawn so long;
For fate had etched a bitter mark upon his soul,
As doomed to quest for truth, to mend a past grown cold.

Amidst the relics of a once resplendent grace,
He treads on worn marble paths with tear-stained face;
The temple walls, though frail, still whisper tales untold,
Of yore where love and honor shone like glimmers bold.

“O ancient shrine,” he cried, “thy secrets I implore,
Reveal to me the past that haunts my spirit’s core;
Restore my lost remembrance, guide my weary plight,
Unweave the threads of time and grant me yester-night.”

The stones replied in silence, echoing his grief,
Their muted voice a mirror of his lone belief;
Yet in that sacred gloom, a spectral murmur stirred,
A promise of forsaken truths within each word.

Through vaulted halls where dusty light did faintly stream,
He sought the memory of a life that once did gleam;
For long he knew, by cursed decree, no path returns
To days of bliss, now lost beyond the endless burns.

A memory, like fragile dew upon the dawn,
Reflected in the gloom where hope would soon be gone;
A wife, a cherished muse, whose laughter graced his day,
Now shrouded in the mists where time has worn away.

He wandered deep into the labyrinth of stone,
His verses sighing secrets as his heart atoned;
Each step, a sonnet woven with immutable rue,
Each heartbeat echoed loss, a grief once pure, but true.

In somber niches carved by hands long turned to dust,
He found a relic crowned by sorrow and by rust;
A weathered inscription carved in language old and wise,
It whispered of a portal that through ages did arise.

“O mystic word from past, reveal thy promised art!
Unlock the door to yesteryears, my broken heart!”
Thus bidding farewell to hope that yet might pave the way,
The poet pressed his trembling hand to cold decay.

Within a chamber dim where ancient vapors danced,
The echoes of the past in fervent steps advanced;
There in that sanctum’s dark, a mournful light did gleam,
As if the gods of memory enkindled one last dream.

“O time, relentless master, thou dost not yield to man;
My soul is bound by curse, confined by fate’s own plan.
Return I crave to ages past when love and truth reigned,
Yet every dream of yonder days appears profaned.”

The ancient walls responded in a weary tone,
A hush of timeless sorrow murmured through each stone;
The voice of deep antiquity intoned soft and grim,
“Return, dear bard, is naught but vain and futile whim.”

Thus, in a dialogue of hearts, the truth was laid,
That time once lost can never by mortal will be made;
“Your quest is doomed,” the shrine intoned with somber grace,
“For truth, once sought in vain, leaves leave no saving trace.”

He wept, his verses trembling in the stagnant air,
As destiny revealed its cruel and harsh affair;
A voice within the temple, soft yet full of scorn,
Declared that time, like fleeting mist, is doomed to be forlorn.

“By curse condemned,” he cried, “to seek what once had been,
To mend the broken paths of life, to cleanse what now is seen;
I challenge fate, though frail my hope, to light the ancient trail,
To mend the shattered relics of memories pale.”

Yet, sorrow’s hand, relentless, stirred a bitter wind,
And all his fervent yearning saw his fate refined;
A vision came before his eyes in spectral guise,
A shimmering horizon where past and future dies.

In that illusion, bright yet tainted by despair,
He saw his love of yester-year, beyond compare;
Her voice, a whisper far across condign divides,
Yet in the truth of time, no mortal soul subsides.

“O dearest love, if fate allowed a fleeting chance,
Return with me to days where we in bliss might dance;
Yet guard thy heart, for time’s embrace is harsh and grim,
And bid farewell the golden past that now grows dim.”

Her spectral form, like starlight on the midnight crest,
Responded with a sorrow such as none could attest;
“To chase the fleeting echoes of a bygone hour,
Is to embrace a woe that leaves but shattered power.”

Thus, midst the sacred temple’s mournful, vast domain,
The poet’s cursed heart was imbued with deepest pain;
For in that fleeting visage of a love long dead,
He tasted bittersweet, the promise that once bled.

With trembling voice he questioned fate in final plea:
“Why is the past so distant, like a lost memory?
Let me step through time’s locked door and reclaim what is gone,
For naught shall soothe my soul unless the past is drawn.”

But fate, unyielding, cast its stone with icy might,
And every hope he harboured turned to endless night;
The temple’s ancient echoes whispered through the hall,
“Return is but a phantom dream—a sad, forsaken call.”

In anguished strains his verses wove a mournful dirge,
While time advanced its ceaseless march, an unrelenting surge;
Each measured line an elegy to lost embrace,
A soliloquy of years that vanished without trace.

From vaulted arch to crumbling wall his laments resound,
An orison for moments by the cruel winds unwound;
The cursed young poet, grasping what he ne’er might hold,
Was left to wander endless nights in grief untold.

“Accursed am I!” he wailed beneath the marble dome,
“A soul imprisoned by the past, forever far from home.
The truth I seek, though radiant in its silent grace,
Bears witness to the doom that no man can erase.”

And so the ancient temple bore his sighs in time,
Its corridors enshrining verses of his climb;
For in that hallowed ruin, midst relics of despair,
The truth unfolded slowly, leaving none to spare.

As twilight’s final embers bathed the temple in its gold,
The poet’s heart, though brave, was by its sorrow told;
No mortal hand could mend the tear in time’s vast seam,
No fated road could lead him back from lost, eternal dream.

He knelt amidst the ruins, weary of his quest,
For every step towards the past brought anguish in his chest;
The whispered echoes of the temple, soft and clear,
Urged him resign his yearning and surrender to his fear.

“Return, dear friend,” the murmuring wind would faintly say,
“Yet know that all which’s cherished must forever decay;
The truth you seek is but an ephemeral delight,
A glimmer that dissolves into the endless night.”

Thus, sorrow etched in marble and in rune profound,
The cursed young poet’s fate was solemnly spellbound;
No portal to the past could mend the scars of life,
Nor could its fleeting charms relieve his endless strife.

As night descended on the temple with its shroud,
A silent truth became his sole companion, proud:
That time, relentless and ever cruel in its decree,
Would hold him fast in sorrow, never setting him free.

Alas, the final act of fate was harsh and cast,
A bitter end to hopes that dwelled in memories past;
The poet’s quill, now still, had sung a somber tune,
For he had lost the promise of the lost, eternal noon.

In trembling script he penned his final elegy,
A testament to life’s ephemeral cruelty;
“With truth as beacon yet as curse upon my breast,
I now resign to time’s embrace, no sweeter rest.”

And as the night enshrouded all in sombre shade,
The ancient temple sighed for promises decayed;
A lonely voice, a final verse that softly fell,
In mournful cadence spoke the truest toll of hell.

“O cursed fate,” he cried, his soul by grief possessed,
“No mortal man may breach the bounds of time’s arrest;
For though I sought to break the chains of yester-days,
I find no respite in the past’s unyielding maze.”

Thus ends the tale, in tragic wealth of bitter lore,
Of one whose quest for truth revealed but pain in store;
The cursed young poet, lost in time’s relentless call,
Now lingers as a shadow ’neath the ancient wall.

In final, tear-stained lines inscribed upon the stone,
He left his soul bereft, forever left alone;
No echo of that distant love, no glimpse of days reborn,
Could salvage ambitions shattered on a cold, forlorn morn.

So mourn, ye hearts that wander ‘neath the vast, uncaring sky,
For truth, though noble sought, may lead but to a sigh;
And let this tale, in elegiac verse profoundly writ,
Be met with somber grace, for life is but a transient skit.

In silence now, the temple keeps its sacred lore,
A monument to hopes that are no more;
And where once a cursed bard did tread with burning zeal,
Now echoes only loss, and fate’s unyielding steel.

Thus, with final heavy verse and soul bereft of might,
The poet slips into the endless arms of night;
No portal back, no solace found in time’s desolate embrace,
But only bitter truth and grief’s unending trace.