Dragon's Lament

There are legends that dragons were once a source of wisdom and there are legends that pair the dragon with the Christian's Satan. This poem is from the dragon's point of view.

Dragon's Lament

Times were not always such as these,
Where I must live on mountaintop,
To seek my revenge on priestly drones,
Down in the vast, valley of bones.

It was the priests, that greedy pack,
Who turned the lively forest floor
Into a plain of burial zones,
Down in the vast, valley of bones.

Once men and I would stop and break bread;
We'd share our laughter, stories, our verse,
And not hear such mournful howls and moans
Down in the vast, valley of bones.

But lies they set forth to fill their creed,
Placed my kind with satanic schemes,
And turned their healers into witches crones,
Down in the vast, valley of bones.

One by one, they killed off my kind;
Friends turned into foes by intolerant lies.
Now Man, he whispers in hushed, soft tones,
Down in the vast, valley of bones.

Times were not always such as these,
Down in the vast, valley of bones.

This poem is written in a modification of a poetry form called Roundelay. The Roundelay is a unlimited series of quatrains with no required meter and a distinct rhyming pattern. The rhyme scheme used is either aabB or abcC, changing the initial couplet's rhyme with each quatrain. The last line of the initial quatrain is repeated as the final line of each quatrain. In this particular poem, I have used the abcC rhyme scheme, with aacC for the last quatrain, followed by the addition of a couplet using the first and last line of the poem.