Five Hymns: Hymn to Earth

Enjoy this reading of the poem Hymn to Earth, part of the Five hymns series by Quivaylan Soth (Michael Williams), the Bard of Ansalon. This poem first appeared in The History of Dragonlance: Being the Notes, Journals, and Memorabilia of Krynn, released on June 1st, 1995. Buy The History of Dragonlance: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/197643/The-History-of-Dragonlance-2e?affiliate_id=50797

Five Hymns: Hymn to Earth

Of rock and earth, of magma and cold shale

Build our belief. The hammer of the god

A truth forged in the absence of starlight.

And here amid the sediment of years

In darkness covering darkness, where the eye

Mines for the ore of mystery, the earth

Lies rich with promise and the fire of days.

Thorbardin and Thoradin, half an age

Has covered you, and half a dozen wars.

Here, in a thousand seasons,

Breath transforms to rock, to immaculate crystal,

Bone to onyx, the blood’s loud current stilled

In the white stalactite. Here all things lie down

In darkness, and a vein of ore recalls

The lost light of our dreaming days.

And this is what we dream, what we remember:

In the black husks of carbon, we awake,

Devolving centuries, transforming fire,

The blue millennial diamond in our hearts.

So insubstantial are the bonds of earth

That stone is breath and pyrite is desire,

The light of gemstones is a rain of stars,

And what is gracious, what is misconstrued

As old illusion in the hooded night

Is the true vein that binds the bone to breathing,

Binds stone to the gods’ air, and in the vein

The gold, glimpsed like a prophecy of light.

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