Souls Of The Slain

A tribute to the fallen warriors of Nordic lore, and the maidens of war, who recover their souls.

For manifold years kinsmen shivered,
Within the shade of the wanton blood,
As wary days and nights became often,
A nightmare stretching onto the strands.

The war of the athelings strewn amain,
A blood of the kinsmen into a gory flood,
With the Saxons and the Jutes wedged,
Betwixt the cleft of the murdering hands.

And the shrewd lords had broken again,
A truce of a brethren of the days of yore,
As a ruthless and baleful madness waxed,
With those who sought to slake their thirst.

Thence the gods unfastened upon them,
A grisly bane witnessed in the nights fore,
And beyond a dale came striding forward,
The horde of stour fiends that durst first.

The dreaded ettins that rode with might,
And sent straightway to reave the lief erd,
Coming ahead from a blustery wind nigh,
Upon wider dales when the ground shook.

The throng of the kinsmen halsed them,
And the men swiftly felt their birr heard,
Seeking to thwart the ettin’s furtherance,
Against dreadful wights beyond the crook.

The ettins crushed them with stern grasp,
And slew with sheer strength their flanks,
As the thurses dretched and shent a folk,
And blive their moaning became too shrill.

The athelings of kinsmen began to wilt,
In their longsome and doughty ranks,
And their fallen bodies welked at once,
As thurses gloated and boasted in thrill.

The wroth heathens showed no ruth at all,
And their brath grure had no winsome end,
When the athelings yielded enough worth,
As no more bain men stood graith to fight.

Doom seemed to befall upon them all,
With no more fearsome heleths to send,
And stranded with a will of their wrength,
They sought within the bairns still upright.

The freemen and the thanes wanzed,
With a handful of wearisome athelings,
As the burgwares and striplings fought,
The onslaught of ents beyond the cove.

But a small forgotten token to heed anew,
For the ettins overwhelmed the striplings,
Bearing their wieldy wrath as stark fiends,
Roaring over the breme dead that strove.

The elders blew their blaring blazehorns,
And clept upon the main slayer maidens,
Who came from beyond the lively welkin,
With the bustling winds within the earth.

Bestowed with long and flowing silky hair,
With trig shields and spears led by ravens,
Coming down from a sky as a ball of fire,
Riding upon the steeds beyond the garth.

The trodden ground rumbled unsteadily,
As sundry souls of the fallen men arose,
Whence the fiery and swith wraiths began,
To slay the fearsome ettins that waned.

They wrested their souls upon dying,
As an unwavering whirlpool that rose,
And the ettins crumbled in their thew,
Within deadly drops that had rained.

Hence the maidens of war came to free,
A wrath brought upon a kith by the gods,
As the daughters of Odin uplifted soon,
A grill anger of the gods that had ended.

A worn of the wraiths of the men dwined,
In the blicking light of the lightning rods,
With a lasting trust amidst the folk known,
Within the steady troth afterwards blended.

A yemeless war betwixt thedes brought,
A willful bond upon them through years,
But broken by reckless greed and sleights,
With the leery souls then forgotten and lain.

The war of the athelings led to a downfall,
And shed upon wlonc Vikings unrim tears,
That had begotten forthwith a tirfast heleth,
Who wreaked after the souls of the slain.