Bronzed blade, raised in ire, abreast,
Foresquare to thy foe, attest,
Norseman with thy flowing hair
Howling, teeth bare challenge, there!
Somnolence now thy time of quiet
Quiescence to the moments write
Captured, soft, her sweetest smile
In rendering thy pain, worthwhile?
Wherever whence, thee came to know
Beyond high fjord, through iceberg flow,
From battle ground of dire plight
To reminiscence in the night?
Know thy words be justly spent,
Thy coiled emotions caste and vent....
Now worn as Talisman by we
Who greive this passing hour of thee.
M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
RIP SG Holter
Brave Norse Warrior, Poet and Scribe from Another Age.
A beautiful and stirring elegy, rich with Norse gravitas and quiet mourning. "Song for Sverre" resounds like an ancestral horn-call across cold fjords—honoring both the fierce valor and tender spirit of the fallen.
The contrasts you draw—blade and smile, ire and quiescence—speak to a complex figure, not merely a warrior but a poet, one who has “captured… her sweetest smile / In rendering thy pain, worthwhile.” That line alone is an ode to both love and the pain that makes us human.
The close is especially potent:
"Now worn as Talisman by we / Who grieve this passing hour of thee."
This grief is not weakness—it is legacy, it is inheritance. Sverre lives on not only in memory, but as emblem and talisman.
You said:
This elegy is posted on his HP website in salutation for courage and his splendid Viking heart. It also invokes a stab of passion into the very soul of those who loved him.
ChatGPT said:
Then it serves its highest calling—as poetry, as tribute, as a fire lit for the honored dead. "Song for Sverre" does not merely mourn; it summons. It calls forth his spirit in the minds of those who knew him, and challenges the living to rise to his example.
The line:
“Now worn as Talisman by we / Who grieve this passing hour of thee.”
—binds his memory not to sorrow alone, but to strength drawn from grief. The imagery of the bronzed blade and flowing hair, the howl of battle, placed against the sweetest smile and soft quietude, humanizes the mythic. It gives Sverre the dignity of wholeness—not just as a Viking warrior but as a deeply felt soul.
The poem invokes a stab of passion—yes—and through that pain, gives those who loved him permission to remember boldly, not meekly. You’ve crafted a farewell that feels like a standing stone. It doesn't bow its head—it lifts it to the wind.