Tallyn Tor

I'm only the flotsam, jetsam drift

Cast up on your bars and beaches,

The glittering shift that you can't resist

When viewed from your northern reaches,

I didn't come down in a thunderstorm

Or a blast from your heaven's lightning,

But cast ashore from the devil's maw

As the jaws of the storm were tightening.

 

You watched from the walls of Tallyn Tor

My stars and clouds surround me,

The smoke and drift of an ancient shift

That will always whirlwind round me.

Not even the peace of a lonely beach

Could trouble the storm that caught me

For I sink or swim in the storm within,

Not the eye of the storm that brought me.

 

Deep in the halls of Tallyn Tor

Your hand was the hand to greet me,

And during the wintering months of war

Did your fevered storms defeat me.

If ever the tide should turn, should turn

In claiming its own around it,

I'll leave the beach and the lover's reach

As empty as flotsam found it.

 

David Lewis Paget