La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Finally some art I can show here.

Done for the monthly theme at [link]

After the following poem:

The Alternative La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Amanda Hemingway


I was born where a dark star fell,
where the wave sucked at the land,
where the old god spilled his seed like foam
I sprang on the silver sand.

I grew up wild as a leopard cat
and fair as I was wild,
and my heart’s blood beat with earth’s first heat
and my soul was earth’s first child.

I wandered among mortal men
and pale they grew and wan,
and by the lake’s edge in the withered sedge
they mourned when I had gone.

I saw their starved lips in the gloam
but never a kiss I gave,
and whining verse and hopeless curse
they babbled to their grave.

I left the king to his empty throne,
the warrior to his spear,
and then I met a peasant lad
and took him for my dear.

His hair was black as the raven’s wing
and his arms were strong as the sea,
his kisses sharp as an iron thorn
and he thrust them deep in me.

A season we lay in the green spring grass,
a season in summer sheaves,
and his tongue caressed where he bit my breast
in the red of the autumn leaves.

When the year was grey I went away
to flee the winter’s chill,
‘I’ll return once more,’ to my love I swore
as I sought the hollow hill.

But spring – and spring – came round again
and I found my love no more,
and the hearts of kings and such hollow things
were all I had to gnaw.

On a night of storm I found his cott
and pressed my face to the pane,
and saw him kiss his mortal wife
with kisses soft as rain.

He came and stood in the doorway
as if he sensed me there
and he saw the loam on my bare feet
and the wet leaves in my hair,

And was that the gleam of a tear
or was it a star in his eye?
And was that the breath of the wind
or was it the breath of a sigh?

But he turned back to the hearthside
to all that was safe and warm,
and the cradle’s rock and the click of the lock
shut me out in the storm.

The years went by, but never a line
would mar the face of the fae,
and once in a while I would pass the cott
and watch his hair grow grey.

And some day soon the whisper will come
to tell me: He has died,
and he’s buried beneath the new-laid turf
with his mortal wife at his side.

I will not go when the church bells toll
to ward the pagan sprite,
but when the bells rust and pollen dust
blows golden o’er the site,

when the wild rose weaves its iron thorn
above his sleeping head,
then I will gather up my dreams
and hie me to his bed.

And I’ll dig up her green green bones
and scatter them over the plain,
and she must pick them up each one
ere her soul return again.

I’ll take the vessel of her skull
where grub and beetle hatch
and toss it away like a ball at play
for goblin hands to catch.

Then I’ll sink down through the warm dark earth
into his arms of bone,
and there I’ll sleep forever deep
and nevermore alone.


Text © Amanda Hemingway