The Cursed Bard of Twilight’s Veil

Here walked the bard, his soul a tempest’s hymn,
Whose verses stirred the stars to bitter tears,
Yet Fate, that weaver of horizons dim,
Had cursed his quill with prophecy’s sharp spears.
“Beware,” the sylvan spirits oft had sighed,
“The garden grants no solace to thy heart—
Its beauty blooms but where true loves have died,
And splendour fades as whispered vows depart.”

But still he lingered, drawn by some dark charm,
To seek the muse that mortal realms denied,
Till one dusk, soft as twilight’s fleeting arm,
He glimpsed a figure by the fountain’s side.
Her hair, a cascade of the midnight’s breath,
Her eyes twin pools where sorrow’s secrets slept,
Her voice, a melody that conquered death—
A siren’s call that through his silence crept.

“What phantom art thou,” quoth the trembling bard,
“That haunts this grove where even hope grows cold?”
She turned, a rose whose thorns left tender scars,
And whispered tales no mortal tongue had told.
“I am the echo of what might have been,
The dream that withers ere the dawn may rise,
The keeper of this garden’s grief unseen,
Bound here to mourn where every passion dies.”

Their hearts, twin flames in Time’s unyielding frost,
Ignited passions heaven dared not name,
Yet even as their fragile vows were tossed,
The garden hissed its warnings through the flame.
The lilies wilted where her tears had spilled,
The ivy tightened round the oak’s old throat,
And twilight’s breeze, once tender, now turned chilled,
To chant the dirge of love’s forsaken note.

“O fly this place,” she pled, her voice a storm,
“Ere doom’s cold hand thy radiant spirit mars!
For I am but the shadow of the storm,
A wraith condemned to shun the morning’s stars.”
But he, ensnared by beauty’s fatal snare,
Swore oaths that shook the pillars of the sky:
“Let blight consume the earth, the seas despair—
No force shall rend my soul from thine, or try!”

Alas, the garden’s curse, relentless, woke—
Each stolen kiss a thorn in Fortune’s side,
Each whispered vow a chain that silence broke,
As doom approached on wings of crimson tide.
Her form began to fade like mist at dawn,
Her touch grew cold as tombstones in the snow,
While through the grove crept whispers bleak and wan:
“The hour is nigh… the debt thou shalt owe…”

One final eve, beneath the cypress’ sigh,
They clung as roots that dread the tempest’s wrath.
“Forgive,” she wept, “that love must lead to die—
The curse demands… our path… is twilight’s path…”
Then vanished, leaving but a single rose,
Its petals black as memory’s last stain,
While through the garden’s heart a tempest rose,
To drown the bard in everlasting pain.

Now, when the moon bleeds pale on withered stone,
And nightingales cease their discordant cries,
A shadowed figure roams, forever lone,
His verses etched in starlight’s dying sighs.
The garden sleeps, its splendour long since fled,
Its fountains dry, its arbours choked with thorn,
And lovers shun the legends left unsaid—
Of poetry’s curse, and how true love was mourned.