He sits in a cold, darkened corner, alone in a dead-silent room.
A head full of much restive nothing, a heart full of deep, dismal gloom.
Golden his glazed-over eyes are, black-brown his long, tangled hair.
Pink-pale his thin, cracked, dry lips as they part to breathe stale, fetid air.
Gone is the once-milk-white tunic, now dirtied to brown, dingy grey.
Gone now his tall, doe-soft boots, for the thieves long since took them away.
Gone, too, his once noble bearing, that confident lift of his chin.
But most of the missing is summed by the lack of his once-frequent grin.

It's true he was not always forlorn. It's true he was once free of care.
It's true he was once just a man, blessed with wisdom and courage and flair.
It's true, too, that once he was much loved, and true that he loved her in turn.
What's more, he once dreamt of a life that they'd share with their growing unborn.
Truth lived in her blue eyes and soft locks, filled his mind and his heart and his soul.
And 'tis true that his volatile temper was well soothed by her serene control.
And she, for her part, shared his great joy, gave the warmth and the light to his day.
But more, is the truth that he shattered when cruel life took his lover away.

Thus now he just sits in his dark place, watching nightmares of her in his mind,
Living and reliving horrors that his enfeebled thoughts deftly find.
His mem'ries see sun-speckled meadow, smell heather and pine on the wind,
Before fixing on visions of caked blood and the feel of her slack, cold, dead skin.
Thus broken thoughts shift to swift vengeance - the black hundreds felled by his blade,
And he screams out his rage to the stone walls where they echo sharp guilt e're they fade.
Then there in his rock hell he huddles, eternally living his pain.
In shivers and shudders unceasing while tears fall like bitter, warm rain.

These sounds are the cries of the broken, which ring through the valleys and hills.
This is the destitute singing of a bard that life's counterpoint kills.
Here, too, is the end of a hero and the birth of a legend of fear,
A wild, lost, dead Lord of the Forest ruling many a long, bleak, dark year.
Let Wolf be his silent companion. Let Hurt be his best, bosom friend.
Let rage and despair be his bedmates in his self-made, cold, wet, mountain's end.
For these are the Darkest of Ages and the decades of suff'ring and strife,
And this is the shattered, mad Merlin, who's been dashed on the sharp rocks of life.

Inspired by Stephen R. Lawhead's Merlin, the second book in his Pendragon Cycle.