Lars's Mountain (triple acrostic with reverse)
A King o’ Storms is solitary
Biding on the Crag o’ Sark
Ringed by mountains bleak and chasmed
Intersected by the dark
Death has taken Lars’s kindred
Ending all familiar days
Forebears slipping into silence
Only memories remain
Rising from the quiet table
Traced by sorrow’s mastery
Held by time and life’s brief candle
Etched with new solemnity
Stormking; ruler o’ the mountains
To the crags forever tied
Ordered life goes slipping by him
Rendered loneliness abides
Matching days with all the seasons
Kindness slipping from his hands
Indivisible by actions
Newly fettered by demands
Guarding all the soft emotions
Not for solitary men
Indescribable devotions
King o’ Storms must wake again
Mindful of the tread of duty
Reaping what his forebears sowed
Open to a great beginning
Turning from the slough of woe
So he rises from his dullness
Eyes unhooded in the mist
Hope for footprints to the future
Treading to a bridal kiss
Reason calls to court a woman
Of the sturdy western isles
Fresh-faced girl in kilted tunic
Earnest with no ready smiles
Duty calls for Lars to marry
Raise a queen to so abide
In the days that future beckons
Bringing him a willing bride
Amrinnah Hillsong swings her mantle
Burnished hair is all unpinned
Ranging far across the fellside
In the bosom of the wind
Driven by the heart of duty
Even to the marriage bed
Flint-heeled boots instead of slippers
Open heart by mercy fed
Rejoicing wind whips by the cragface
To the shadow of a man
Hale the stormking though he’s grieving
Embered passions may be fanned
' So- Amrinnah- late of Hillsong
To my crag you’d pledge a life?
Open-eyed and unencumbered
Reign with me and be my wife?'
May this crown become Amrinnah
Kindly opportunity
Informs so few yet chance enlightens
None deserving more than she
Grant their future unity
Biding on the Crag o’ Sark
Ringed by mountains bleak and chasmed
Intersected by the dark
Death has taken Lars’s kindred
Ending all familiar days
Forebears slipping into silence
Only memories remain
Rising from the quiet table
Traced by sorrow’s mastery
Held by time and life’s brief candle
Etched with new solemnity
Stormking; ruler o’ the mountains
To the crags forever tied
Ordered life goes slipping by him
Rendered loneliness abides
Matching days with all the seasons
Kindness slipping from his hands
Indivisible by actions
Newly fettered by demands
Guarding all the soft emotions
Not for solitary men
Indescribable devotions
King o’ Storms must wake again
Mindful of the tread of duty
Reaping what his forebears sowed
Open to a great beginning
Turning from the slough of woe
So he rises from his dullness
Eyes unhooded in the mist
Hope for footprints to the future
Treading to a bridal kiss
Reason calls to court a woman
Of the sturdy western isles
Fresh-faced girl in kilted tunic
Earnest with no ready smiles
Duty calls for Lars to marry
Raise a queen to so abide
In the days that future beckons
Bringing him a willing bride
Amrinnah Hillsong swings her mantle
Burnished hair is all unpinned
Ranging far across the fellside
In the bosom of the wind
Driven by the heart of duty
Even to the marriage bed
Flint-heeled boots instead of slippers
Open heart by mercy fed
Rejoicing wind whips by the cragface
To the shadow of a man
Hale the stormking though he’s grieving
Embered passions may be fanned
' So- Amrinnah- late of Hillsong
To my crag you’d pledge a life?
Open-eyed and unencumbered
Reign with me and be my wife?'
May this crown become Amrinnah
Kindly opportunity
Informs so few yet chance enlightens
None deserving more than she
Grant their future unity