The Wistful Lament of the Wandering Soul
Upon a tempest’s bitter cry at eve, in vain,
There sailed an errant soul ‘midst roaring main;
A spectral wraith by memory bound and torn,
Ensnared between the realms of night and morn.
In dreams it sought the past’s elusive shore,
A yearning heart that pined for ne’ermore;
Each cresting wave bestowed a mournful sigh,
As dream and truth in twain did coldly vie.
II.
Beneath a vault of mottled, ink-drenched skies,
The wind did moan like lost ancestral cries;
The raging sea, a mirror of despair,
Reflected secrets of a world so fair.
A soul, bereft of worldly hope and grace,
With heavy tread upon the treacherous base,
Dared wager with fate its halcyon past,
Yet all returns proved vain and doomed to last.
III.
“Behold,” the spirit whispered to the gale,
“My heart, a ship with tattered, worn-out sail,
Still seeks the distant lands of erstwhile dreams,
Where pure delight in golden sunlight gleams.”
Yet Fate’s unyielding hand, with iron will,
Would not relent, nor grant its quest thus still;
For every plea cast upon wave and wind,
Was answered only by remorse unpenned.
IV.
The sea’s vast fury, like a beast untamed,
Did scorn the hope that in this soul was framed;
Each crashing wave, a dirge of bitter lore,
Did only mend the wound it bore before.
Upon these bounding crests of endless strife,
There danced a wraith in search of lost old life;
In dreams, he trod the corridors of yore,
Where laughter rang and time was felt no more.
V.
A spectral banquet, memories arrayed,
In gilded halls of hearts long since decayed,
Invoked those moments cloaked in gilded light,
Yet bound by sorrow’s insidious might.
He recalled a gentle, bygone melody,
Where every note bewitched in rhapsody,
Now drowned beneath the tumult of the sea,
A lost refrain of once tranquility.
VI.
“Return I must, to where my soul did bloom,
Though fate decrees but tempest and foredoom;
To touch the blossom of that hallowed past,
Where time, once pure, might yet in spirit last.”
Thus breathed the wanderer in despairing tone,
For every step was marked by grief’s own stone.
The raging deep conspired to hold him fast,
A mirror of mistakes that were amassed.
VII.
Onward he pressed through the unyielding night,
When neither star nor moon adorned his flight;
The wind, a bitter tutor to his plight,
Taught him that constant hope must yield to blight.
Each surge and swell recounted all his woes,
And gently washed the dreams into repose;
Yet in his breast, the ember’s faint, forlorn,
Persisted ‘gainst the coldest, darkest morn.
VIII.
Midst swirling veils of mist and silver foam,
He glimpsed a vision of a long-lost home—
A meandering shore by starlight graced,
A land where time its somber steps had traced.
“Is this the fabled past I long to claim?
Or but a trick of mind, a faltering flame?”
In whispered tones, he questioned heaven’s art,
Unsure if truth or dream still gripped his heart.
IX.
The ocean, vast and cryptic in its ways,
Revealed no answer in its turbulent gaze;
Its ceaseless roar did blend with whispered cries,
A lullaby for lives’ uncertain ties.
Thus bound by bittersweet and mournful verse,
The soul pressed on, immersed in nature’s curse;
For every fleeting glimpse of times gone by,
Was tempered by the sea’s unyielding cry.
X.
The hours, like sands, through timorous fingers fell,
Each moment wrought with longing’s grievous knell;
In that abyss where dreams and winds entwine,
He trod the path of fate’s relentless design.
“My dear past,” he called, “where art thou now?
I come beseech thee—show me sacred vow!
Grant me reprieve, though brief the soft caress,
That I may mend my heart in tenderness.”
Yet silence reigned, as ancient as the deep,
Where sorrow and regret in shadows sleep.
XI.
Aboard this vessel of melancholy,
He sought refrains of ancient revelry;
Remembering a time of summer light,
Where laughter rang and hope stood shining bright.
In dreams, a visage clad in radiant grace,
Appeared—a kindly face from sacred place.
“Come hither, soul,” the gentle specter cried,
“Though time be lost, still shall our fates abide.”
But as he reached to clasp that spectral hand,
The sea’s fierce might remade the shifting sand.
XII.
The waters surged with vengeful, baleful force,
Dividing dreams from hope in cruel discourse;
No tender promise could he thus fulfill,
For fate had sealed his destiny with ill.
A swirling gale, a sudden, mournful blast,
Did snatch his hope and bind him to the past;
In that abyss, his longing heart did weep,
For solace lost, a treasure now too steep.
XIII.
“Alas,” he cried, “the past is but a shade,
A mirage that doth through our visions fade;
No mortal hand can grasp the vanished sun,
Nor yet restore the innocence undone.”
Indeed, the sea of time, in roaring might,
Denied him entrance to eternal light;
For every step to reclaim bygone dreams
Was thwarted by relentless, dark extremes.
XIV.
The errant soul, now heavy with regret,
Stood transfixed as destiny’s silhouette
Etched final chapters on the wind and foam—
A requiem for dreams that could not, could not come home.
The heavens wept with silver tears so pure,
As all his hopes lay shattered in demure;
The crossroad twixt the dream and stark despair
Resounded with a truth too grim to bear.
XV.
In solemn cadence of the mournful wave,
There echoed of the time he could not save;
The past, a far-off beacon never near,
Became a phantom wrought of sorrowed tear.
Upon that ruthless sea of endless woe,
Where mortal dreams like fragile petals blow,
He learned the ruthless tide of life’s decree—
That time, once lost, returns not, ceaselessly.
XVI.
Thus, fate bestowed its final, chilling toll,
And from his breast it stole a weary soul;
No portal back to yesteryears remained,
No hope of solace in the past reclaimed.
“Farewell,” he murmured to the mournful waves,
“Farewell, my dreams, my love that brightly paves;
In vain I sought to weave a time undone,
For dreams, as truth, are lost ere they be won.”
XVII.
Now, as the twilight dims upon the brine,
The soul, aloof, resigns to doomed confine;
The raging sea—a prison of despair—
Keeps vigil o’er lost hopes and silent prayer.
Alone he drifts on waters cold and vast,
A relic of a happier, fleeting past;
A warning in a tale of endless night,
Where dreams and truth in sorrow take their flight.
XVIII.
The final verse resounds in depths below,
Where memories like winter’s blossoms blow;
A requiem for times that ne’er may live,
Revealing what no mortal heart can give:
An elegy of love and lost delight,
A tale inscribed upon the endless night;
The soul, once vibrant, fades to whispered lore,
Its voice a sorrowful echo evermore.
XIX.
In that descent—where dreams and woe entwine—
A truth remains, profound and so divine:
No mortal hand can steal the fleeting past,
Nor can the heart retrieve what fate has cast.
The winds of time, relentless in their course,
Erase our hopes with an unyielding force;
And thus, the wandering soul learns, with regret,
That all return is naught but grim vignette.
XX.
So, heed the call of dreams, yet hold them dear,
For life is fleeting, shadow’d by despair;
Embrace each moment’s fragile, transient glow,
Before the tides of time bid them adieu so.
For even as the sea in fury roars,
And dreams are lost upon its bitter shores,
There lies a beauty in the tearful art
That binds the lost soul with a grieving heart.
XXI.
And now our tale, with sorrow’s deep refrain,
Finds solace in its elegiac strain;
A tribute to the dreamer’s ceaseless quest,
Who sought to mend a long-forgotten rest.
Yet, in his journey ‘cross that stormy sea,
An echo of lost bliss comes to decree—
That what is past remains forever gone,
A cherished ghost in twilight’s tender dawn.
XXII.
Thus, as the fervent waves resume their cry,
The soul, resigned, heeds fate’s unyielding sigh;
A final glance to realms of bright allure,
Then sinks beneath the depths, so still, demure.
In the vast expanse where mortal dreams decay,
One truth, though bitter, stands resolute and gray:
That hope may rise on wings of wistful pain,
Yet ne’er retrieve the dreams that must remain.
XXIII.
Upon this endless sea of dark remorse,
Let every beating heart recall its course;
For though we strive to rejoin days long past,
The flow of time is one too swift and fast.
In every soul that dares to dream’s embrace,
Lies both the light of hope and doom’s encase;
A balance struck ‘twixt yearning and despair,
In which the tender heart finds solace rare.
XXIV.
So mark the fate of he who chases time,
A fate inscribed in verse and mournful rhyme;
For dreams, though sweet, are but a fleeting gleam,
A whisper lost within the endless stream.
A warning to all souls beneath the sky:
The past, though cherished, doth but pass by;
And in the sea of life’s unyielding woe,
We forge our fate, and reap what we bestow.
XXV.
Now ends this tragic, epic tale of yore—
A narrative of longing evermore,
Where dreams and truth, in ceaseless quandary, blend,
And every heart must meet an untimely end.
Let not thy spirit languish in regret,
For every tear and sigh is duly met
By time’s relentless and immortal art:
A masterpiece of love, though torn apart.
XXVI.
In final somber note, the raging sea,
A mirror of life’s ceaseless agony,
Bears witness to a soul that dared to dream,
Yet found to life a sorrow far extreme.
So may this tale, with elegiac tone,
Resound in hearts, and leave them not alone;
A beacon in the tempest, soft and clear,
That dreams and truth, though married by our fear,
Shall ever mark the mortal mortal plight
Of souls adrift through day and endless night.
XXVII.
And thus, our tale concludes with tender pain,
Where memory doth mingle with the rain;
The errant soul, now one with brine and foam,
Finds solace in the sea that calls it home.
Its quest for past—a bitter, futile chase,
Reminds us that no time can be replaced;
Yet in our hearts, that lost, effulgent light
Shall guide us through the implacable night.
