The Last Druid

She’d lived alone since her husband left

Just after the fall of Rome,

Deep in the forest she’d kept herself

In the tangle of trees called home.

He’d left with one of the Legions, they

Recalled to defend the State,

Leaving Britain with Roman roads

And her people, left to their fate.

 

Aeronwy came from a Druid clan

From a mixture of kings and gods,

She’d never age in the forest glade

Where she lived with her hunting dogs.

She lived on berries and lived on fruits

And the kill that the dogs brought in,

But knew she never must see herself

Reflected in any spring.

 

‘For if you do,’ said a holy man

‘You will see that the years are fraught,

Your spells and philtres won’t help you then,

You’ll lose what the ancients taught.

The years will tumble over your breast

In a wave, and take your breath,

As long as you live in this vale of trees

You will be immune to death.’

 

She wept for the loss of her husband then

For he never came back home,

She didn’t know he’d been taken off

With his Legion, back to Rome.

They’d met when a hunting party came

To slaughter her Druid clan,

But she was spared, for her beauty there

Would entrance most any man.

 

He’d stayed with her in the forest glade

For a month of making love,

She prayed that he’d never leave her, in

A plea to the gods above,

She little knew of the world out there

Of the waning Roman’s might,

And so she wallowed in bitter tears

In her loneliness, each night.

 

Her time was not as the time for us,

Her minute was like our day,

The years would fly in her restless nights

As she dreamed her life away.

But she woke as fresh and as beautiful

As she’d been the night before,

While scores of agues and deadly plagues

Swept on, in a world at war.

 

The forest began to shrink as men

Fed wood to their kilns and fires,

What once had been a forest became

A wood, in the sight of spires,

She heard the clang of hammers on steel

At the factories rise and rise,

And soon her trees were surrounded by

New roads, and telephone wires.

 

Then men came into her forest glade

While cutting a new canal,

She hid in the corner, in the shade

As her trees began to fall.

One day she woke and the cut was there

With a little hump-backed bridge,

She mounted slowly, up to the top

And balanced over the edge.

 

She gazed down into the water that

Was still as a mirror’s sheen,

And saw the face that began to race

Through the thousand years she’d seen.

Her hair flew wide, and before she died

She muttered a weary moan,

‘I’d be content if it only meant

That my husband came back home!’

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Dennis White]

I am awed at the detail you have woven into this dynamic story telling/poem. Each brushstroke adds to the depth of imagery and complexity of the tale. It surely held my interest to the very end, thank you for sharing your time and talent here.

Dennis

[TL Boehm]

Eloquent and tugging on the heart - waiting a thousand years for someone who never returns....the ache.

[TPK Stories]

Am always curious about the Druids...great story....

[BThomvanWart]

I loved this. To be frank, I'm not always a lover of epics, but I liked where this went and how it ended. While I could take it literally, I think I'm going to lay heavily into the symbolic nature of this. Perhaps it was not your intention, or it was, but I think this emphasizes what happens with ignorance and consumption. Now, I say this because the men who discovered her simply used her as a women and then later, began destroying her home. And consumption because she herself was consumed with grief over her husband, and then it shifted momentarily to the diminishing of her home (the grief I mean.) But, by the end, what was she to do? Her home was basically a few trees from what appeared to be an innumerable forest. I think the end is probably a just one.

[Baby Ricochet]

That was one hell of a poetic story sir.

[Mark]

Somewhat anticlimactic, I felt. Certainly she knew that the brook would be reflective, so her actions seem suicidal, as if to say, "With my lover never to return, and now my forests taken, too, what's the point of eternal life?": if you can't have your Who OR your where, all's your left with is WHY! On the other hand...(there's ALways an "other hand" with me, isn't there!), perhaps she didn't know that the water, hitherto shielded in the darkness of the wood, would be mirror-like; an examination of how we can be tricked by the unanticipated characteristics of a too-familiar object.

[Cory Barrett]

David, stunning write and story.

[Marie]

David, I'll bet you didn' t know that I was a druid in one of my past lives. I too mourn the forests' passing.

[Claire in VA]

You've done it again, David! You are a brilliant story-teller. This tale kept me engaged throughout.
If only her beloved had returned!
~~~Claire~~~