Play the flute and pluck the lyre
Create music for the choir
While all around great lords conspire,
Cloth’ed all in black attire,
Talking of their base desire,
As the time grows ever nigher
For the lighting of the pyre,
Lighting of the funeral pyre.
“Whose funeral this?” you may inquire,
As you watch the flaming fire,
Watch the smole rise higher, higher.
“Is it Lord or is it squire,
Or perhaps our noble sire?
Courageous soldier, bold defier,
Whose mighty deeds we all admire.
To reach such fame we all aspire.
Could it be he whose suit’s afire?”
People come from town and shire,
through the bog and through the mire,
Pushing through the pressing gyre
To watch the Lord of All transpire
Below his castle’s tallest spire.
Soon the crowd begins to tire.
Men and women all perspire
From the heat of the great fire.
The situation now is dire,
In vain the crowd tries to respire.
Every throat is getting drier.
People falling soon inspire
Other people to expire.
Some even fall into the fire
Causing flames to reach still higher.
It doesn’t take a prophesier
To see that the whole town’s afire
All started from a funeral pyre.
Could flames be nature’s beautifier?

Copyright 2016 by Art Metzger. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission.