Salamander

Salamander

(A Kothorling Chant)

Once, formed amid the flame-scorched earth
In fire-sundered wastes,
From vaporous pits of brimstone sprang
The Salamander race.

A shining drake of humor cold,
With eyes of onyx charmed,
The Salamander tread betimes
Amid the flames unharmed.

And bathed in molten, shimm'ring pools
Of rock run liquid hot
And drank to slake its freezing thirst
The veins of flowing rock;

And chanted when at weary dawn
The sun was dipped in flame
And by those pools of sacred heat
Rekindled for the day.

But darkness came from the starless South,
Beguiled that happy race--
That once had laughed at scorching heats
And danced in treeless wastes--

It bent and changed, as darkness will,
Their nobleness debased,
And made them wicked, strong, and cruel:
Slow-wyrms and fire-drakes.

On bloated belly do some go,
Some walk on gripe-claws cruel;
And some with scaly wings outspread
Guard hoards of glitt'ring jewels.

And all of that draconian kind,
Their eyes like burning death,
Do belch from black and toothless jaws
A noxious, poisoned breath.

And in their ruby eyes there glares
A soul made flaming hot;
To subjugate the mind of man
And set his will to naught.

'Twas thus they earned the enmity
Of ancient Koth-or's kin
And ever have we warred with them--
The long defeat to win.

Until at last the sun's hot orb
No longer moves aloft,
But sinks into the world's embrace
And sets aflame the rock.

And then the lands of green will split
And wither and decay,
And dark and night will be no more,
Nor then will there be day.

The Salamander folk, reborn,
Will march across the land,
And walk among a burning world
Where once there had stepped man.

And there the Salamander folk
Will joy in fields of fire,
Where grow white stones and blazing gems,
Unquenched as hot desire.

This shall be the end of things:
When seas are burning lakes,
And shining Salamander folk
Cavort in treeless wastes.