trobaire.org

a collection of literature from poets, bards, songwriters, and skalds in the SCA

From Dust

Edith-de-Brereton
Poem (Canso): 

To flesh from dust and dust again
When what from dust has come and been,
Made into dust, dust may begin –
Flesh into dust and dust from skin.
Dust takes from dust what dust may take
And falls to dust in dust’s own wake.

Documentation / Explanation (Razo): 

This is heavily modeled off of “Erthe Took of Erthe” which is a poem written in Middle English. Basically around this time period (1300s and on into the 1400s), writers wrote a lot from the religious viewpoint that life is futile, and that earthly pleasures are futile since everything returns to the earth. This was even written about by Pope Innocent III. Chaucer wrote about it in his “A Thoroughfare Full of Woe”.

I wrote this according to version A of the manuscript at the British Library. It has a rhyme scheme of aaaabb with four beats per line, with a rhyme at the caesura and at the end of the line. The word “earth” is always at the caesura of this version. It has a very similar theme and feel so it’s not super original but it’s historically and stylistically accurate.