As far as a man can peer thro’ the mist,
Sitting on watch, looking over a wine dark sea,
So long is the stride of the god’s thundering horses
Homer
Heroic Counsel
I find a strange knowledge of wind,
an open door in the mountain
pass where everything intersects
Lorna Dee Cervantes
High upon the snow-clad slopes of Snowdon
Britannia brandishes her family,
Empacing by her faithful Gwydion,
Awaiting Neptune’s first emissary;
Green Merman comes,
Darp’d in coral sharkskin,
The sounds of horns & drums… the meeting may begin.
Phoebus the drouthy scene illumes
As serious parlance cooks,
Zephyrs ruffle Ra’s ostrich plumes,
Her Majesty nears the crux,
“I sense the Harbinger of Dooms,
Rough cancer fills the flux,
The testing time forespaken drawth near!”
“Come the day,” shouts St£rling, “who shall fight here.”
The loyal company, & true,
Cries ready for the War,
Violet Vishnu skims skiey blue,
Ra sails for dusky shore
Neptune accomadates Dagon, the Lion roars it roar!
Britain
Apocalypse
Once, in the burning age
of flowing stone
the Devil’s old dark toffee overflow’d
Robin Munro
Four riders climb thro’ the bowels of DIS,
Hooves flashing thro’ flammable Phlegethon,
Splashing thro’ dismally Stygian piss,
To ford the dark waters of Acheron;
Yon Cerberus,
Three-headed, howling hound,
Over Lake Avernus, to stand on Midgard’s ground.
The air grew thick with snort & steam,
Oer the Red, White, Black & Pale,
The Moon took on a crimson gleam,
Bellow’d up a fearsome gale,
Around the hoof what horrors stream,
Pungent in noxious veil,
A thousand Civiallos & their sneer
Releas’d on Earth to furnish curse & fear.
Mars lifts his blade, strike splits the ground,
Lungs blow the martial roar,
Lor’lein sounds startling the hounds
Pacing the Paynim shore,
Whom approach him & approaching wield the first snarls of War.
Europa
Divine War
Then came a flash from out the cloud,
& a stunning thunder-roll ;
& no man dared to look aloft
WE Aytoun
At first it seems a cloud of far distance,
Choking the icy wastes of Cocytus,
The standards of the King of Hell advance,
Behold! the proud legion of Satanus;
Waving rough sword
In motions of his might,
Behind, a Daemonhorde, above, a Dragonsflight.
As his son & heir-lieutenant,
Swings his hammer, broad Mjolnir,
Proud limbing Odin’s forces went;
From the stallion Sleipnir
Toward the trembling Occident
Points his great spear, Gungnir…
Sol tentatively rising from the East,
Grew too afraid to light the royal feast.
On clinquant rays three saints descend,
George, Michael & Denys,
Jove’s holy blend, call’dd to defend
Faith’s physicality,
Blades sharpen’d for the battle, feather’d backs against the sea.
Britannia
Death of Venus
Fate’s tree is crowned with thorns;
you can search forever but
no blossom will break its opacity
Hasan Sijzi
Skull-Loki steer’d his steed in freedom’s flight,
Tall oer Europa’s thickest forests & ranges,
& lands upon a mountain of delight,
Lone grey, priest loonranting of its dangers;
Strong steps funnel
Along a moisty cave cave,
Waiting in that tunnel, Love laugh’d & gave a wave.
As Loki lecher’d on her dress
& a face above all art,
The temptress-scented loveliness,
Legs slenderly held apart,
O! the vision of her cestus,
Temple’s resplendent heart-
What man could fight allurements of her charms?
What god could fight her pure, “Come to my arms!”
Plunged was a poison-tipp’d dagger
Thro’ Venus’ heaving breast,
By grey river a murderer
Lay fairest corpse arest
Hair willowing thro’ water, one breaks free from all the rest…
Horselburg
A Savage Affray
Impetuous brains mistake the signs of God
Too easily. God would not have me waste
My zeal for Him in this wild enterprise
Lascelles Abercrombie
Smoke, flash & shout; a massive, grassy plain,
The Cockerelle of Gaul battles Odin,
Together Tyr & Toutatis lay slain
& all the world was echoing the din;
Auld Saint Denys
Transforming to a Hart,
Chased by these tuskBoars three, hoovepounding as they dart.
To the scene of desperate fight
Enveloping Saint Michael,
Some foulish serpent’s poison bite,
That beautiful bladesman fell,
To morass down in frantic flight
Saint George did dive pell-mell;
To disappear ‘neath flailing tooth & claw,
To burst back with his kinsman, soak’d in gore.
Slow-driven backwards twards the sea,
Albion’s precious moat,
Desperately, defiantly
The Lion rampant fought,
Deep gouges in its surly loins, wylde Harpies at it’s throat.
Europa
Prometheus
My voice is raised, the truth to tell,
And o’er his exiled urn will try
To pour a strain that shall not die
Alessandro Manzoni
Wide-eyed inside a nightmare’s aftershock,
The great God of War wakens in the rains,
Arms entermeddl’d, tied to craggy rock,
In craven rage instraining at the chains;
“Why hold me here?”
Shouts echo cross the seas,
No rescuers appear, now dropping to his knees,
He fills the cosmos with despair,
From dawn ’til the drop of night,
At last the Dark Lord made aware
Of the War God’s awful plight,
So sends three harpies thro’ the air,
Craw-throated feral flight,
From whose sharp claws raindrops a golden key,
What mass of slime uprises from the sea?
That key grabb’d by a tentacle,
& Lord Mars was releas’d,
Stands grateful, branding his skull
With numbers of the beast,
Pois’d ready or the battle, Hell’s hegemony increas’d.
Oceania
Halting Hell
Moloch, why sleepest thou? Beelzebub!
Mammon! & all ye potentates of hell,
Rouse, rouse, your energies
Thomas Northmore
Satanus tried to set the sea on fire
& boil the flesh of Neptune from his bones,
Saint George swings wide his blade, Jove’s first flyer,
Safely whipping flames off with brisk cyclones;
Yet felt a bite,
Pure ichor gushing free,
He fac’d the Dragonsflight with terrible fury.
In raging snick-a-snack attack,
Deus dripping from bright eyes,
Three dragonskulls split with a crack,
To the final foething flies,
& slices wings from bony back,
One heart’s thrust & it dies –
A day of evil darkness pacified,
What dismay’d groans erupting from Gaul’s shore-side.
Dreadful Babababashurath,
The dauphin Lizard king,
Bred wrack’d with wrath, son of ‘Gorath,
Black bone where once was wing,
Sinks deeply with dragonicide, its limp tail following.
Europa
Love’s Hope
The hot desires burn low, and wan
Those ashy fires, that flamed anon.
The stars have twinkled, and gone out.
John Galsworthy
A river courses thro’ a horseful plain,
Carriageing one golden strand of Venus,
On its fibres a precious, faint bloodstain,
Ingraining the best of her essences;
Europa’s shore
Watches Thetis make play,
Where peasant waters pour into a crescent bay.
As Merman scouts the outer seas,
He spies a velvety thread,
Escorts it thro’ the coral trees
To where old Dagon rested,
& plants it on the snoring wheeze
Of Neptune, bare-chested,
It-locking in an airy, lucid dome,
Now blown off spinning thro’ the underfoam.
Hair lands inside an oyster shell,
Jaws quiver as they close,
Ambrosial mother of pearl,
As soft as spring time snows,
Hushes her magic as the fibre to a wylde rose grows
Oceania
Stand of Pyerun
Wind stokes the chill of the snow,
Snow borrows the wind’s grim might;
Frenzied ‘willow-floss’ panics profuse
Feng Meng-lung
As weather gleams goldenly glorious,
Eversome eastward, spoiling countryside,
Steams the banded legion of Satanus,
Half-a-league in the van four horseman ride;
Grind hooves to halt
Before a vast prospect,
Lit by a thunderbolt… by enemies bespeck’d.
The hordes of Hades charge & fought,
A spirit army scatter’d,
As Pyerun conjures fireflaught
So many helms are shatter’d,
Tough armours caught a fireslaught
Down a gorgeside clatter’d…
Attackers halted, as on either side
Stormcraft repels the abbadonic tide.
More daemons swarm, surround Pyerun,
They’ll deal the killer blow,
Stepping upon a field frozen,
The lake seems solid snow…
‘Til Ice-King’s yell cracks ice; Hell’s shriekings drowning dragg’d below.
Asia
Axis & Allies 