Sir Plaintive Oldcastle's Song Poem by Glenn Bagshaw

Where is the Saracen who drained my heart?
For that surgical infidel with art
unstrung all my veins and flung them apart.
Is he but a dream? Oh I know very well
his skill tells of villains in my own hell!

Where is my lady? The troubadour's song
is vassal to beauty. His song's quite wrong....
Her spirit stokes Satan and his staff of prongs.
Is she but a dream? Why where but here could she dwell?
She's love of a kind in my own hell.

Where is the stag? My hawk? My hound?
My steed gallops life's dark, dreary-go-round?
In the bounds of my thoughts his pace pounds out sound.
Is this then a dream? So fatal to tell!
It's the thrill of the hunt in my own hell.

Where is my liege? for his most sovereign sway
enters like thunder, but quick lightning: away.
The maggot's true monarch of all he surveys.
It's simply no dream, and now my screams swell
for I'm bound to the bellows in my own hell!