Have you seen the moonlight glowing,
On the river, softly showing,
Every ripple's beauty flowing
Past the watcher's waiting eye?

Have you heard the dove-wings beating,
Soft as parted lovers meeting,
Hearts that throb to hear the greeting,
On the listener's waiting ear?

Have you smelt the rainfall's essence,
Shivering in luminescence,
As the stars form sparkling crescents,
And the scent your nostrils spy?

Have you felt the winds' caressing,
As upon the waves it's pressing,
Giving to the earth a blessing
With its touch upon your skin?

Have you tasted wine that glitters
As the torchlight flits and jitters,
As the purpled surface titters,
As it laps upon your tongue?
All these things I've sought and found,
Some in the sky, some underground,
In lightning and in thunder's sound,
And in the calm of death.

Some things are felt on golden days,
When all the world is bathed in haze,
And sunlight burns with muted rays,
The desert and the wood.

Yet others must be learned o'er time,
Through lore and learning, thought and rhyme,
We essay the scholar's climb,
And find answers revealed.

Oft our mortal sins may wander,
In our lives, so that we ponder,
Why we're here and if we're fonder,
Of ourselves than fealty.

Other times in desperation,
We fall into desecration,
Treachery to guild and nation,
Earning enmity.

Born we are, and dying pass,
Beneath the flowers and the grass,
And floating in a sea of glass,
We find ourselves at rest.

Through the Spring we cheat our doom,
As breath floods lungs and light the room,
As limbs are loosed and eardrums boom,
A miracle performed.

Or some long exodus we walk,
As though by teaching and by talk,
Of perorating words we mock,
Devotion's pilgrimage.

But unto each his own, I say:
The world is wide enough to play.
Or work, or fight, or die today,
As each receives their choice.

The Councils or the cities call
The souls of some, who wish a wall,
Between them and a fearful fall,
Into the world so wide.

The warrior needs his sword to live,
The mother cooks, the board to give,
The children play, their time a sieve
That spills as years flow by.

For time is like the moonlight soft,
It's gentleness and lonely loft
A peaceful, soothing draught that's quaffed,
By mortals as it flows.

'Tis like a dove that wings its way,
From roost to roost, nor stops to stay
And dwell for long on any day,
Ere night falls on the land.

'Tis like the wind, and like the rain,
As coming once, it comes again,
A cycle, just as pleasure or as pain,
Alternating through our lives.

These things you've held within your hand,
These truths are known throughout the land,
Aetherius' time moves as the sand,
And passes by as swift.

But friend, a question ask I you -
Have grey skies ever not turned blue?
Have storms not made the faithful true?
Has pain not paid in strength its due,
To those who will endure?

For time will pass, and leaves will grow
Upon the trees, the sowers sow
Their crops, and harvest as the flow
Of Time turns once again.

You cannot change the course of Fate,
No mortal can - the peace we hate,
Of death, and rest at last, will wait,
For none but the Divine.

Your only task is simple, friend.
You simply must your life begin,
And walk through it, and make an end,
With not a one regret.

For those you've known that lived this way,
Are praised and lauded to this day,
By all bards - as I, in this lay,
Have sought to sing to you.

Now as we part, I wish you well.
I hope we meet again to tell
More of our lives, until the knell
Of passing Time us stills.

Penned by my hand on the 7th of Naturalis, in the year 421 AD.