JUST LIKE A MIGHTY WARRIOR
Just like a mighty warrior, who had adventured far,
In outside lands, and made a change where'er his foot did fall,
And in one mighty battle, had vanquishėd the foe,
So where its writ had run so long, no longer could it go.
Like in a Viking forest, where a champion was lain,
And with fire and songs and rituals deep his feats were felt again,
And chieftains hailing from afar had come to honour show,
And ancient words were spoke and sung that touched the very soul.
But old stained glass enfolded us, we sat on wooden pews
The choir in laundered linen fine, the priest with words that soothed,
And ancient words were spoke and sung that touched the very soul,
And his feats were there remembered as the ceremony flowed.
Unlike the Viking warrior his deeds were of the mind
Remembered for his gentleness, perceptive too and kind;
The care he took to aid the young, to help them on their ways
And they were there to honour him, now lengthened in their days.
We heard George Herbert, Philip Larkin, Ecclesiastes, Keats
John Donne, Shelley, Richard Dawkins, Shakespeare, Melville, Yeats,
Reading is like the sea he'd said, refreshes when you swim
Releases, frees, makes bright the worlds that previously were dim.
Our carousals were more decorous than the Vikings' long before,
The roof was beauteous hammerbeam, while theirs had been the stars;
Yet we were somehow there at one, both sad, uplifted too,
With the fundamental sensed and our purposes renewed.
