Lechery, treachery and terror
Or shades or gloom and nothing fairer,
Strangest still from shadows cold,
Sang this story long untold,
Darkest made by greatest fall-
Legions and legends and laurels and all.

Thus sang the hallowed eve,
“This breath I breathe, this life I leave,
As chambers roam, and towers crawl”
Chimed the winds of the whispering hall -
“Darkest made by greatest fall,
Streets are flooded, swamp and sea,
Raining gall and misery,
Tempest comes to claim its crown,
Or power prove, and legends drown”

Ere it walked, it stalked along,
It slithered and withered-
This storm's song,
It sings of grievance,
Agony, despair,
That float as the fires
That burn through the air,
Measuring slow notes
On fine serpent scales,
And hiss how perfection,
To ebony -- it pales,

Where is the Jester?
O cruel mind, weird thunder comes,
And here on its sounds
It rivets, it bounds,
Long the lightning of its stride,
Past places once hope had safe reside,
To palace top, and there below,
Do danger now, and fable flow,

For every throne, an ill unknown
As statues made their dance,
Here the Jester's voice it spoke,
“Here my mighty will hath broke,
How madness sulks! It dredges by,
On murky clouds, this sullen sky,
With glowering anger, rage divine,
Unmade where I stand,
Misfortune to all? Or fell design.”

And the Jester swore, swore, swore,
On all the things he wore-
Every feeling, thought and vein within,
By sorrow squeezed and thicked and thinned,
“What last hours,” he sighed,
“May I – lest fateful tempest died --
Take to dream on all soon lost...
And there, in slumber, stilled to frost.”

By sorrow squeezed and thicked and thinned,
Here ends our story, and all within,