Make a path for / Magnus Refsson
Ravenous flock / ravens, murder
Feasting in his footsteps/ faithful sword Thane
Dauntless defender / of dragon crown
Honor prizing / oathkeeper he
Weighs full well all / words and dealings.
Swift bright sword of / Ser Nikolai
Fells his foes as a / fox amid hens.
Red company’s / captain titled
Honored well with / order of vanguard
Displaying valor / dragon’s tooth earned.
Now kneels to throne/ knighthood attained.
This is done in Saxon verse which is (to be perfectly honest) not right for Magnus’s persona but it’s right for mine and I was the one speaking it. This was done as a boast to herald him into court. The original version was much less polished, as rough drafts tend to be.
Make clear path for / Magnus Refssen
Ravenously / ravens take to flight
Feasting in his / footsteps. Mighty
Defender of / fierce dragon crown
Swift sure sword of / sage Nikolai
Fells his foes as a/ fox amid hens
About the only line that got kept was the last line of verse 2, because his heraldry is a fox and Refssen is “son of the fox” so that imagery needed to stay. The rest of it? Well, let’s red pen this line by line.
Make clear path for /Magnus Refssen
The biggest issue with this line? The beat pattern makes the alliteration muddy. I needed to keep M as the alliteration since I was using his name as the second half line, which means I was pretty much stuck with Make as the first word. Clear needed to go away since it was another hammer beat and that made this way too front loaded.
Ravenously / ravens take to flight
My laurel has an issue with single word half lines. Which means I needed more words for the first half line. It was also pointed out that the imagery of birds taking flight didn’t work with the next line and we needed to make them land some how.
Feasting in his / footsteps. Mighty
This line is a hot metrical mess. Footsteps wants to be before the half line not after, and while wrapping phrases is a Thing in Saxon poetry the phrase generally starts at either the line break or the start of the second half line.
Defender of / fierce dragon crown
This was ok -ish as far as metrics. But clunky and awkward and really didn’t work well with the first word of the sentence being in the proceeding line.
Swift sure sword of / sage Nikolai
Again not bad, but the “of” wants to be part of the second half line, and using “sage” as a descriptor for someone you have never met and know next to nothing about is always a bit dicey.
Fells his foes as a / fox amid hens.
I love it, it’s perfect, I didn’t change a thing.
Other issues with the rough draft:
It was two lines and a verse too short. This is why we have editors people.
aethelfliedbrewbane 