If the pauper could be called upon
to counsel kingly courts

If emperors walked the avenues
barefoot singing blessings

Should generals stand in their front ranks
and ministers shy from war

Should diplomats drink to better times
when strife dared hound their temper

When we step down from conceit
in our most mundane of ways

When gods turn eye to the awe
of the changing of mortal season

Then perhaps a day would dawn
onto a land unbroken
past politic and love of might
where no ill word is spoken

Where poetry and gentle song
would come on every breeze
and every eve be but a call
to dance amid our dreams.
---
And concluding this piece, let me say of the ill Sir Rakon of Mhaldor,
he whose face seems as gray as mountain stone amid this fine war of
wits, that by the rhythmic might of the good Baron "Double D" D'Ischai,
he has been most painfully served, and I would as well prod him for due
riposte! This rumble of rhyme, this cataclysm of composition, deserves
no less!

Penned by my hand on the 20th of Ero, in the year 573 AF.