Poem for the Estrella War
This year’s poem for the Estrella War gift scrolls was written by Baroness Aneleda Falconbridge. She said of her inspiration, “It is the call of the warhorn that rings with the playfulness of the hunting horn’s call, bidding royal cousins to journey and meet in the spirit of the nobles of Duc du Bery’s calendar months. I imagined the bright blue of the southwestern sky in my dreary November as I composed.”
Aneleda used a classic sonnet form in iambic pentameter because “I think [it] feels like the galloping rhythm of a horse on the chase and the leaping of fleet hounds beside it. Considering the sun-soaked nature of the war, it seemed appropriate to make it a bright thing with blue skies to send to the warm Estrella war-fields in Atenveldt.”
Poem for the Estrella War
by Baroness Aneleda Falconbridge
A horn sounds out, its tone is sweet and strong.
Upon the ear sustained note doth lay.
It calls to goodly folk, “Come now along
heed war-fields’ call to sing and dance and play!
Swift, beside the stags and coneys, run
unto the place where gryphons, dragons meet,
a-gathered with their cousins in the sun
in fine display of kinship all too fleet.”
See now a land enchanted does appear
where all shall share in battle and in art,
from shyest maid to boist’rous cavalier,
each noble soul displays a nobl’er heart.
The echo’s path we followed, so contrived.
Beneath Estrella’s sky are all revived.
“It was interesting to write something that was both so specific and so non-specific at once,” Aneleda added. “I had to ask Mistress Kayleigh many questions to understand better the assignment and then I read a few past scrolls to better understand how others had approached it. I also knew that scribes would have different ways of putting it on paper and that its layout would likely be very un-poetry looking. It was humbling to see the scrolls at Birka and I hope that our royal cousins attending Estrella found pleasure in the work.”