Awake, dear souls, and listen well
To songs of yore and tales we tell.
We here have gather’d eagerly
Fantastic sagas for to see.

This one, a romance; this, a poem
Of wizards chanting from a tome;
The next, of old, a tragedy
About two brothers lost at sea.

A bard doth sing his happy tune
Of trekking under sun and moon;
But list’ning close, his melody
Reveals a slight melancholy.

For in his song, a darker tale
Is hiding underneath a veil
Of pretty voice and well-tuned string
And happy fires crackling.

He sings of dragons, fierce and strong,
Who to another world belong,
Of castles grand and halls of light,
Of damsel, page, of squire and knight.

Yet in his story wisdom lies,
As if he had, with his own eyes,
Beheld these wonders of the world
As his own travels once unfurl’d.

Now each of us, become transfix’d,
Is holding to each word betwixt
The sound of laughter and of dance;
We find a place to be in trance.

And just like that, the tale is told
Of dragon-hearts and blades of gold.
We clap, we sing, the fires roar,
Asking the bard to tell us more.

But he has vanished, disappeared!
And aft the fire-smoke has cleared,
We see no tracks; the man is gone
Who sung with us ere light of dawn.

So we return to revelry,
More songs to hear and tales to see.
The children laugh, the lovers smile,
Forgetting hardships for a while.