"Long Have I Desired!"

"Long Have I Desired!"


Fields of wheat and barley pledged a plentiful harvest that year and meadows somnolently enfolded in peace were indifferent to the world’s frantic pleadings outside the realm. The castle’s environs boasted colors of brilliant saffron and bold autumn russet --as lovers, accosted by the lingering flavors of the spoils of summer, were drawn together one last time to frolic.

In the greensward, where hazel, ash and oak trees thrived in graceful extravagance and lad’s love, goldenrod and wintergreen flourished, the evocative melancholy calls of lapwings could be heard and a visionary on the hill, whose resolute partings and plethora of reasoning disguised his need for desire, appeased his senses listened to silent indefinable rhythms of his own.

In a long-abandoned walled pleasance, samphire and comfrey survived and lady’s mantle returned each season long before it was so named. A prince cantered through heather-rich moorlands to meet with a carter’s daughter to assuage his loneliness and in a far off mountain sanctuary, an austere monk reserved his life for devotion in immaculate silence.

In the ‘Grand Chatreuse’, the abbess, enveloped in the lustrous prismatic light emanating from the sacred objects and alabaster splendor, caressed her rosary beads and thought of transgressions. The steely resolve etched in her features attested to dealings with varlets and mountebanks, but if grace eluded her -- the nobility of her nature was reflected as well and her demeanor, encircled by artistry, was fortuitously enhanced by her surroundings.

The ruling monarch, audacious and wise, breached herculean tasks with ease, but to his consort’s endearments had grown impervious. Would but that his fickle fancies were interpreted as favorably as his crippling reticence, but because to ideals of fealty and honor he fervently adhered and bravery in the crimson rage of battle imprinted him with valor, his imperfections were advantageously overlooked.

To his sequestered queen naught was bequeathed but a bower of flowers, which for a pittance belonged to everyone -- but her ineffable grief was well hidden and astrologers deemed her role not to be of her own device, but that of celestial mischief makers. In her face rested a quality once judged lovely enough to yield profit and resplendent in sumptuous silks and iridescent pearls she radiated compelling charm, crystallized by compassion and generosity.

The day the balladeer appeared, woodsmoke lingered on a southern wind and great bands of migrating geese, like giant arrows, drifted across the cobalt sky. It was said that the untamed sea that crashed against the coast like a dark, crazed melody marooned his ship and miraculously somehow he survived.

A red hawk, his breast as if dipped in wivern’s blood, circled high above to announce his presence and weathercock, the color of quicksilver, turned in a frenzy in all directions.

On the castle’s watchtower a vigilant sentinel was first to lay eyes on him and on the ramparts, the castellan, leaning on a thornwood staff, eagerly watched his progress as he crossed uneasy, swirling streams -- and when through a quinze thicket he walked unscathed, it was as if skill triumphed over truth.

With lute, harp and tampor he came -- sonnets on his lips and plainsong in his soul. In a coat of murrey and argent and his hat was garlanded with snowdrops and foxglove – his skyclad, azure eyes, in the amethyst mist of twilight, shamed the indigo violets beside the road.

Through the hall of forgotten footsteps he came, the rushes under his feet fragrant with sage and elderflowers. He entered the solar and the vast carved oak portals obediently opened as if untouched and awakened suddenly from serenely dreaming by the fire, wolfhounds pranced excitedly about demure maidens in periwinkle and primrose embroidered gowns attempting to master the Saltanello and Aquanile.

Upon seeing the troubadour, the dancers’ pirouetting ceased at once, their gemlike sapphire and topaz colored eyes alight with pleasure. The heat of the ancient hearthstone seemed to increase and embers sighed, as the fragrance of frankincense and myrrh becalmed the air and wraithlike veils of smoke drifted hypnotically to the rafters. Complete silence ensued as if, not only the moment, but the walls themselves were enchanted.

As his music unfurled, he came under the guardianship of every eye and when piquant and heady hippocras was offered, he was soon received with buoyant celebratory geniality. Elusive and mysterious, his expressive face, purified by experience and highlighted by an incandescent luminous nimbus of curls, he enthralled even the imposing and proud king.

The queen, aware of a sudden rush of empathy and fascinated by an unaccustomed mystifying yearning, watched him with keen rain cloud eyes and her cosseted, enraptured ladies-in-waiting envisioned themselves helplessly enmeshed in overpowering craving and sweet surrender.

As the evening progressed, his gaiety of deportment, leavened with tender melancholy, entranced and captured his audience, as if held hostage until tribute was paid. All were intrigued and transfixed by his pleasingly powerful impression and the infinite joy conveyed by his poetic and melodious songs tantalized his listeners with a hungry willingness to surrender and a desire to be part of his world.

He entertained them with tales of fierce, rapacious northmen who came aviking from inhospitable northern fjords, magnificent and terrible in their dragon ships --and captivated them with the saga of Epona, who with herds of fierce magnificent galloping horses at her beck and call ruled wild and desolate steppes.

His lyre kissed welcoming ears and his voice, spiced with boldness and ardor, seduced lips to smile. He sang of pendragons and the Lance of Lothian and told them of Joscelin and Amaratha, a tale of euphoria and vitriol, never before heard -- and of Fortuna, who veiled, blind and capricious whispered endearments and caressed those she favored, but destroyed others.

His listeners’ imaginations were captured by intoxicating songs of bliss and agony and of lovers who vowed that without the beloved’s regard, their hearts were naught but an enemy within -- and of goddess-like sylphs, bedecked with lapis lazuli, who in fear of forgetfulness faithfully tended the eternal flame of Vesta.

Tales of alliances and betrayals spooled from his lips and all present were riveted as he sang of an enchantress caught between travesty and ecstasy and of an oriental seneschal who gave his time to a titled lady, but guarded not his heart and thus embraced Selene instead-- who knew him to be her own.

He spoke of innocent young princes in a tower, whose death was yet to be and of forgotten myths about changelings and druids dancing in oak groves in moonshine. He intrigued them with stories of the netherworld and the savage satisfaction of specters and banshees in the rowen trees after dark.

He told of the danger of worship begetting irrevocable boundaries and how soothsayers foretold the unheard sumptuous pageantry of a bedeviled monarch and how it spelled his doom. He sang of knights’ gallant and exquisite courtly gestures -- and of musketeers who pursued sanctified rapture, glory and immortality.

His lilting flute sent them a message from the high priest of Aaron and a mountain of light and his tampor accompanied songs of mendacious cavaliers and the intrigues of exotic young princesses clad in gold encrusted brocades and chadors -- and of those who practiced the healing arts and witches who gathered henbane and deadly nightshade for purposes unknown.

Indominable warriors, contumelious deeds and ineluctable fate inhabited his songs and laments and sonnets were brashly born of the moment while others, long treasured, were skillfully presented to beguile. Then, accompanied by his lyre he revealed his own sweet fevers -- fiery angels and forsaken solitary nights and love for his “anmchara” --a woman long desired and unforgettable.

He imparted his belief in spirit power -- the essence of life that pervades all living creatures, the soul-breath of the world present in every breathing thing -- that which inhabits earth, water, air and fire and has dominion over the heavens.

The night seemed endless as he sang ballads about magic and the keepers of the light and enigmas of the unknown. But morning came at last, as it must, and as if unearthed by an ancient spell -- he vanished.

Some claimed it was an enchantment, others denied the pleasure of their senses and the verities of their beliefs and yet others ascribed him charms and powers of persuasion too dangerous to be acknowledged.

In the cloister, the abbess startled out her reverie, understood without having heard the news of the bard’s departure, that he had come and gone. As if to confirm her awareness, the bell for matins abruptly stopped, a stone whipped by the wind shattered a counterpaine and in a guarderobe a trapped goldfinch fluttered free.

The queen was not surprised when her peregrine falcon refused to hunt that morning and she wistfully, with delight and regret, recalled the bard, whose appearance was like porphyry inlaid with aquamarine and polished onyx favored by the glow of the setting sun.

That night wolves gathered in silence on a starlit hill but refrained from greeting the moon as was their nature and to this day people avow a shrine of jade and moonstones in the balladeer’s memory exists somewhere, carefully hidden in a sacred place.

Legend has it that once each century, the troubadour returns in the guise of another, to bestow insightful, provocative, insightful songs, slow regal laments and dulcet sonnets with heartbreaking, transcendent melodies.

For generations, from the secluded hallowed hills to dense forbidding forests, from leafbud equinox to the “long dark,” the story goes that on certain autumn nights, when the veil is thin between worlds, a hint of fragrant jasmine seasons the air and echoes of lyre, lute and tambor can faintly be heard -- a tribute to a vanishing ghost...come and gone.


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"Long have I desired", in Latin is the motto of a medieval king.

"Long have I desired", in Latin was the motto of a medieval king.
Examples of medieval music and plainsong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54KnOC_AXJU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glrBz3GrFsQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bf1bFOf4Gg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taanHO13WXE