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The Crusader
From England to Jerusalem we come,
Our pennons proudly flying as we pass.
A host of knights from all of Christendom,
Our only tongue in common was the Mass,
Yet we were one. And painted on my face
The badge of our crusade, my noble kith, who for
The sake of men, here in this very place,
The King of Kings on timbers roughly bore.
And now the smoke of battle chokes the breeze.
The air is filled with cries of stricken men.
Our battle-axes fell the Turks like trees
As once I fell and now must fall again.
Who would have thought that I could ever go
So far, to rot here riven by the foe?
The woodsmen burned my boughs, while adz and ax
cut out my oaken heart to make a shield
To blunt the blows and fend the fierce attacks
Of Turkmen on the bitter battlefield.
My earthly lord is now a doughty knight.
I do my duty in his leathered hand.
Steadfast, my liege and I together fight,
By might of arms to free the Holy Land.
The very words for True and Truth and Troth
Are rooted in the sturdiness of oak.
My master and my God: I serve them both
As heathen towns like incense rise in smoke.
O bitter joy! With willing heart I gave
My all to save my master from the grave.
(c) 2001, by C. Brian Towey. All rights reserved. This poem in its entirety, including this notice, may be freely reprinted.
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Written Documentation for "The Crusader"
Form
This work combines three of my favorite literary forms: One is the Elizabethan sonnet, which is practically the only period verse form that has remained popular these 500 years. Another is the battle epic. J. R. R. Tolkien, that great scholar of Middle English, could write for pages using only sturdy Saxon words, and avoiding flowery French phrases. I have tried here to do the same. And, the third literary form is the Bolo novel, where the weapon surpasses the courage and virtue of the warrior.
The English sonnet reached the height of its development in the 16th century, when poets like Shakespeare made it far more popular than the Italian sonnet that preceded it. Sir Thomas Wyat and Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, introduced the sonnet to the English court. Sonnets were often written in series, as these are. For example, the Canzoniere of Petrarch, published in the 14th century, included 317 sonnets addressed to his beloved!
This particular breed of sonnet, so closely associated with Shakespeare, has the rhyme scheme ababcdcdefefgg. While the rhyme scheme is a bit looser than the Italian sonnet, this is balanced by the requirement for a final couplet that serves as a summary or punchline to the preceding verses. These 20 syllables should be crafted with haiku-like precision. I like my sonnets strictly formal: no poetic license for weak rhymes or extra syllables. I also do my best contorted word order to avoid. The best period sonnets read as well as prose as they do as verse.
Period Concerns
These sonnets are in the voice of a Crusader's shield destroyed in battle. The Crusades were obviously well before the flowering of Elizabethan lyric poetry, so the subject is retrospective even from the period of the poetic form. Because it is retrospective, I have tried to give it a more Medieval flavor. That is, I was trying to write as Lyly would if he were trying to sound old-fashioned. So, I worked in more alliteration than a 16th century poet might, and avoided late-period words of Latin, French, or Greek derivation.
One cannot address the Crusaders' world view without taking into account their religious devotion, and I count the piety of the poem as an important element of its period character. The medieval mind was, as you know, very sophisticated in the use of allegory and metaphor. The irony of the cross painted on a wooden shield, or the shield saving the knight who was first saved by the cross, are, if anything, broad and obvious compared to the subtleties of Medieval theology. The same goes for the death and rebirth of the tree as a shield, stripped of its outer form and rededicated to divine service. I flatly deny that I was influenced by "The Tale of the Three Trees," which my children love to read.
Truth, True and Troth do all derive from dru, from which we also get the word Druid. Druids not only held the oak sacred, but also practiced true-name magic, and the true-ness and sacredness of the oak were indivisible. Of course, working Druids into a poem about Christian knights is a bit of a stretch, so I didn't even try. But, the linguistic association of oak with truth and steadfastness is another important period element, like remembering that sage the herb and sagacity were welded together in the medieval mind.
Finally, the fealty of the shield-as-vassal is an important and deliberate period element.
(c) Copyright 2001, by C. Brian Towey. All rights reserved. This article in its entirety, including this notice, may be freely reprinted. Portions may be quoted with attribution. |
