I wrote this poem when I was twelve years old and just rediscovered it today. I’m posting this unchanged, as a tribute to my twelve-year-old former self. Terribly clichéd (it seems I was reading Mallory at the time), but there is something about it that lets me connect to the time I wrote it and what I was thinking and reading at the time. So no apologies, what it is, it is.

Requiem for a King

In the year of eight o’ three
A noble king did cease to be
In England’s pastures green.
He had lived a noble life
Full of turmoil, full of strife
But now was mourned by just his wife
The noble King Arthur.

A score of years before, or more,
He had started England’s war
In England’s pastures green.
But now he lies upon the sward
With his hand clenched round his sword
The sweat and blood from off him poured
The noble King Arthur.

Several months before, that year,
He had married Guinevere
In England’s pastures green.
But now the girl beside him lay
At the ending of the day
As death did take his breath away
The noble King Arthur.

The very last words that he spake
Were ‘throw my sword into the lake’
In England’s pastures green.
Excalibur flashed through the air
It’s mighty blade dull, hard and bare
A hand shot up and caught it there
For noble King Arthur.

Then, as the night was drawing on
And moonlight on the water shone
In England’s pastures green.
A barge across the water flew
With Queen’s inside, the noble few,
And up to Arthur’s bed they drew
The noble King Arthur.

And as the shades of evening fell
‘Twas heard the tolling of the bell
In England’s pastures green.
The barge across the lake sped on
With its helm of black-necked swan
And then for ever he was gone
The noble King Arthur.

Written at Oakham, 1960