THE ROWAN CANTICLES - Canticle II - Canto XXXI - The Tingling Game
A Tale Told in the Ancient Manner
The Rowan Canticles is an epic rhyme about the length of Homer’s The Odyssey. I’ve used character voices and music to bring it to life. The old school language can be dense, but I hope it’s fun. It fits the nature of the fantasy.
You’ll find ninety-nine Cantos in all, thirty or so contained in each of the three long Canticles.
If you are just discovering this work, it’s much more enjoyable if you start at the beginning.
https://oddsbodkin.substack.com/p/the-rowan-canticles
Happy listening and reading!
— Odds Bodkin
Don’t forget to download the companion Glossary below for definitions of archaic words to smooth your read!
CANTO XXXI
THE TINGLING GAME
Time spent in study is not lost,
Although it can feel dense and slow.
It cannot outdo hours betossed
By love's intense fortissimo,
Or action's fast, exciting pulse,
Or lustrous, jeweled, and showy things
We'd gladly have instead. Impulse
Aside though, without furnishings,
A mind is little more than walls
Of sight and sound, smell, touch and taste
With nothing inside. Study hauls
Out places we can sit. Ungraced
By studying until that time,
Young Devlin marveled at the breadth
Of what he did not know. Sublime
He'd never been. "Devlin, bespreadth
Thy thoughts across this lesson's mark,"
Mah-Ling said one eve, poised to leave,
"And thou wilt see how thy spell's arc
Wilt Demon leashes fast unweave
And leave the Mages with no slaves
To do their bidding." Hand in his,
Gudrunlod marveled at how waves
Of understanding magic’s quiz
Had swept her since Mah-Ling’s first words
Had left her breathless in the tree:
How clear light’s sentience soon begirds
The nascent synchronicity,
And how her left brain fed the flow
Of Water-Knowing, pooling there
In Devlin's ever-brighter glow
Of right-brained might. Had they explored
Each other further? No, just lips
And hands they’d joined, but not their loins,
Not yet, their dual apprenticeships
Unfinished still. Lust, love adjoins,
Of course, and each one’s blood was hot
To consummate their aching jewels.
Yet both knew sex would spoil the plot
They'd hatched together, if, like fools,
They caused a rift. Instead, they played
A tingling game. She'd dreamt it up
One moonlit night when they had stayed
Past lessons late. The soft-swelled cup
Of her thin blouse, as she'd perspired,
Translucent grew. Her aureole
Pressed wet inside it. This inspired
Devlin to stare with all his soul
At her plump breasts. She’d smiled and winked,
And then said, "I'll show you all of me,
If you show me." Devlin had blinked
And nodded dumbly. He could see
No one about. Mah-Ling had gone.
Panting, Gudrunlod dropped her top,
Unlaced her strings, then stepped upon
Her crumpled dress. “See my jaw drop,"
He said, as she, now fully nude,
Stood boldly in the dripping air.
At once, he felt his pants protrude,
Tent-like, as she fluffed back her hair
So that her globes swung to and fro.
"Oh, gods, I love this," she replied,
Touching her mons' mustachio
And gazing at him. Goggle-eyed,
He stripped his sleeves and popped his drawers
Down to his knees. "Thy weapon, boy,
Hangs not at thy side, as it stores
My someday children," she said, coy,
Yet hungry for him, warm inside.
"It won't be storing much at all
If we persist in this, my bride,"
Devlin spoke in a husky drawl,
His urge to mate a painful thing.
"If we can’t touch, then why not look?"
She asked. He'd found it maddening,
Yet, in good faith he undertook
To ogle, as she posed and showed
Her body's secrets. Nights thus passed,
Long, heat-filled nights that pulsed and glowed
With pressured love. Each one surpassed
The night before, yet they refrained.
Instead, they grew a radiance
Of love's desire, seared in the pained
And sultry air. The gradients
Of self-control they soon learned well.
Old Mah-Ling’s tests they took in stride
As moons counted each fledgling spell
Until the great Sly beamed with pride
And sighed, “Thou knowest all I do,
My children. Hasten thee now home.”
“North, Skar?” they asked. “Would I eschew
A chance to help thee? Let us roam
Again, my friends.” Away they flew.
The time to drive the story on
Had come at last. Kill that foul crew
Of Mages, then chase down that spawn
Who’d stolen Devlin’s Rowan Hills,
--Undo his Tree King’s curse though, first,
To walk in peace those sparkling rills
Once more, a man no longer cursed--
And on the journey find a way
To make sweet love. A cozy plot,
The sort events tend to waylay,
Whether we plan on them or not.
END OF CANTICLE II
Next Week: CANTICLE III Begins
Much like a symphony in three movements, Canticle III develops, then recapitulates the rhyme schemes in Canticles I and II.
After the Introduction, we go to whorls, as I’ve named them. A whorl features eight lines that rhyme from the inside out. The first and last end words rhyme, the second and seventh end words, and so on, with a couplet in the middle.
New knowledge is a heady thing.
When we are young, it seems more so,
As each epiphany roars by
To scatter what we thought we knew
Before it. Swept up in the new
Insight it brings, we glorify
Ourselves with what we’re sure we know,
And thus can end up blundering
After a series of these whorls, the poem moves to free verse, but with a twist. Even though not apparent at first, every end word has a mate somewhere in the same Canto. Have fun hunting them down. It’s a fun puzzle for those inclined to such things.
Lastly, the final Cantos modulate through mixed whorls, quatrains and couplets, until the poem returns to the tonic, as it were, and ends with couplets, where it began.
