[OOC] Poetry from Kushiel's Legacy

[ladybryony]

Beneath the golden balm
Settling on the fields
Evening steals in calm
And farmers count their yields
The bee is in the lavender,
The honey fills the comb,
But here a rain falls never-ending
And I am far from home.

~Exile's Lament, by Thelesis de Mornay

O, dear my lord...
Let this breast on which you have leant
As close in love as a foe in battle,
Unarmed, unarmored, grappling chest to chest,
Alone in the glade
Where birds started at our voices,
Laughter winging airborne, we struggled
For advantage, neither giving quarter;
How I remember your arms beneath my grip,
Sliding like marble slickened;
Your chest pressed to mine
Heaving;
As our feet trampled the tender grass
Your eyes narrowed with tender cunning
And I unaware
Until your heel caught my knee; I buckled,
Falling,
Vanquished; O sovereign adored,
To be pierced ecstatic by the shaft of victory;
Sweet the pain of losing,
Sweeter this second struggle...

O, dear my lord
Let this breast on which you have leant
Serve now as your shield.

~Anafiel Delauney