The Lay of Hades
At last I wearied of the dark
My heart and eyes sensed only dark
Above the blooming violets met me
With petals pale and centers dark
Across the meadow, lithe and winsome
Earth’s daughter tarried with tresses dark
Her face, the sun, she turned away
And plunges fields in yearning dark
Lamenting I sank in the soil
to brood alone in my halls of dark
Her vision haunts once peaceful dreams
and sick with longing, my thoughts turned dark
As fleet as frost I grabbed her up
And dragged her down to brighten the dark
To my cold hearth I brought her weeping
My treasure safe, well-cloaked by dark
I wooed with gold, I wooed with meat
and finest wines, rich, bold, and dark
Her face, the sun, she turned away
and plunged the fields to scornful dark
At last relenting, six seeds she took
and stained her lips with telling dark
And with that stain, Earth’s cycle’s sealed
the year is halved by light and dark
In Summer gone, yet with the snow
The Queen returns and shines through the dark
My heart and eyes sensed only dark
Above the blooming violets met me
With petals pale and centers dark
Across the meadow, lithe and winsome
Earth’s daughter tarried with tresses dark
Her face, the sun, she turned away
And plunges fields in yearning dark
Lamenting I sank in the soil
to brood alone in my halls of dark
Her vision haunts once peaceful dreams
and sick with longing, my thoughts turned dark
As fleet as frost I grabbed her up
And dragged her down to brighten the dark
To my cold hearth I brought her weeping
My treasure safe, well-cloaked by dark
I wooed with gold, I wooed with meat
and finest wines, rich, bold, and dark
Her face, the sun, she turned away
and plunged the fields to scornful dark
At last relenting, six seeds she took
and stained her lips with telling dark
And with that stain, Earth’s cycle’s sealed
the year is halved by light and dark
In Summer gone, yet with the snow
The Queen returns and shines through the dark
The above is a ghazal, a Persian style of poetry employing a series of couplets (no less than 5, no more than 15). The first pair are rhymed and each subsequent couplet ends with the rhymed word. This ghazal uses iambic tetrameter.
