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"Man's voices have been silent for too long.

His songs are gone long unsung. Man has been

Long disenchanted in this latter age.

What songs are sung in triumph, and what hymn

Is raised to god or gods above the stars?

How often is there heard the joyous shout

Prismed to cadences like light to hue?

When last did you hear, on the autumn breeze,

A rustic dirge hummed idly? How long since

You heard the children chanting, in their play

Stumbling over laughter, like a young

Glad-crazy king dancing upon his day

Of victory before his god? Few, now,

Are those who have heard song, real song. That grows

Like thorn tree in the wild, uneven, rough,

Lacking in symmetry or balance, with

A storm-cracked limb on this side, broken boughs

On that, and on the side facing the wind

The leaves all stunted, but so fierce alive

That yet it blooms even before the spring.

Not song professional. Not song well-paid,

Not song well-glamorized, not song that bars

All attending from aught else but itself,

Not song rehearsed, recorded, or replayed.

Not song perfected. Not song mummified.

Not song ingenious. Not song very good.

But song alive and growing in the mouths

Of man, who does not care if he sings well.

Who sings because it makes work easier.

Who sings because his living shames him not.

Who sings because why shouldn't he? He has

A tongue, and breath to drive it. Why not sing?

Who knows that if to sing is good, than it

Is better to sing ill than not at all,

And though it may be said he cannot sing,

It never shall be said he did not sing.

But where now are sung men and women? Where

Is the music of heaven? Where are songs

To wake the dead and sadden very stones?

Where are the piercing mournful haunted songs

To call the sailor to a gladsome death?

Where is the music of the marriage bed

That made it holy, drunk, everlasting?

Gone, gone. Gone silent is the tongue of man,

For silent is his heart. How can he sing

When there is nothing more to sing about?

What heroes has man now? What tragedies?

What hopeless loves, what battles barely won?

When tyrants yawn upon their easy beds

And fear no death-knell but the doctor's bill,

When grime and uselessness are lord of earth,

What earthly power could move the soul to sing?

It was not always so. Once we believed

In so, so many things. And we were right.

Once our songs had power, so that to sing

And to work wonders on the living earth

Were one and selfsame act. Then was there much

To sing about: heroes, demons, and gods.

How the All-Father carved the earth out of

The corpse of his cold enemy. How he

Planted the World Tree, and it bore as fruit

More worlds than could be numbered, with the seed

Of more world trees in each, and yet more worlds:

To ripen someday. How he lit the light,

And how the thick darkness that comprehends

It not at all pursues it to devour,

Yet hates and curses what it hungers for.

How, written in the firey wine he drank,

The All-Father saw coming dread and doom,

Slaughter for him and his, and for the worlds

That he had sown a neverending night

And after that the nothingness. How he

Defied the fates, and in despite of doom

Foretold and foreshadowed and foreordained,

He gathers warriors brave enough to stand

Upon the bulwark of existence, watch

The salty toxic tide of nonbeing

Rise, pulled by eclipsed moon of its hatred,

Break on their bodies, turn its claws on them,

And only draw their swords and roar at it

The same defiance. How out of every war

He takes the bravest, boldest, and the best.

How something in the darkness imitates,

In mockery takes cowards, traitors, the

Dishonorable dead, and steals corpses

Out of the pyre-ships foundered in the sea,

Soaked with salt brine and seared with frozen ash.

How on a ship built out of dead man's nails

The legions of the damned and mindless come

To make their master's war. How many dead

Will die again upon their cruel swords.

How the twin of the cold colossus slain

To make the worlds and give the warmth of life

To frigid nonbeing, a searing touch

Will lay upon the sky's back side, and will

Split through its dome even as the heroes

Are locked in combat with his undead hordes,

And fire will consume all. Then nothingness

Again will reign eternal undisturbed

As did it once before. Now there is meat

More tempting for the songsmith's teeth. When man

Believed such things, how could he help but sing?

Oh yes, they were rapacious, they were cruel.

Yes, they were violent barbarians.

Yes, they killed thousands to appease their greed.

But they sang, and were brave. And sometimes that

Is enough. If the All-Father still sought

For soldiers in this little day and age,

Would he find men who sang and died so well?

Would he find any? Who can say? War has

Grown cold, and enemies are strangers, killed

And killing without making eye contact.

The weapons have grown wiser than the hand

That wields them, and can go to war themselves,

Without souls to arise heroically

From death's embrace. The cunning weaponsmith

Is in command. Not for nothing did those

Old myths maintain the god of cunning was

The one to bring dark destiny at last:

Behold what cunning has shaped war into!

The very image of world ending fire,

Without its courage, without its brave song.

If yet the All-Father lacked but one soul

To fill his ranks, where would he find him? Not

Upon the battlefield, for battle has

Grown barren, and bears no more fruit for him.

No, only in some ring of combat, where

At least one man in earnest fights, and wields

No weapon but his fists. If such should die,

He might be worthy to take that last place.

At least one looks his foeman in the eye

And smirks, and thumbs his nose. If such should die,

He might awake in autumn woods in time

To join the last battle ere winter comes.

If by some stroke of treason or mischance,

If a dishonest fighter were to strike

After the bell was rung, and guards were down,

And his treasonous stroke went home enough

To kill a man he could not best, perhaps

Such a one would arise, the first to rise

To that cold world of war and glorious deeds

Since ages when men still knew how to sing.

So do you understand at last now, Shane?"