"What Joy Lies Waiting?"

This Byzantine scroll was created for my wife Adelaide's joining the Order of the Pearl, Atlantia's Grant of Arms-level award for Arts and Sciences.

I knew that she was very fond of bold colors and gold on her scrolls, so when working with Lord Aurrie we determined Byzantine would be a great fit aesthetically.

From there, extensive research into Byzantine poetic forms began!

What joy lies waiting, ready ● in her brush or needle?●

Each spilling worlds out ● like the decanting of sweet wine, ●

Which flows in, then takes shape, flush ● to the vessel’s curve. ●

Such satisfaction! ● From nothing but smoothed fabric

Or the inkwell’s depth, ● creation she shapes anew. ●

Before the last press, ● fruit is tended, then gathered; ●

Unseen effort, it can be tasted still in final proof

As invisible expertise. ● What a vintner’s here! ●

She bottles Beauty, ● captivating through detail ●

And craftsmanship unequaled: ● matching each pigment

Or flourishing stitch ● like wine perfectly mirrors the glass

In which it rests. Thus We do, King Eckehard, and Jane, ●

Regina Atlantia, ● Make thee, Adelaide, ●

The Pearl placed in our next toast. ● We raise this rich cup ●

That Cleopatra, ● Queen of endless luxury

Herself, may envy its brightness: ● Such is your art’s shine

That the pearls of Eastern Kingdoms ● she coldly crumbled

to win Marc Antony’s bet ● turn to sand compared

To the precious draughts pouring ● from your careful hands. ●

Done at the Crown Tournament in Our Barony of Dun Carraig, November 6, 2021, A.S. 56, and hereby Granting Lady Adelaide Half Pint the sole right to these arms here blazoned:

per pale embattled or and azure, a tankard countercharged.

In this piece, I attempted to use Byzantine dodecasyllabic verse, taking what small liberties I felt necessary for clarity and use in a different language family than that of the original form.

Formal considerations:

12 syllables per line, in two half-lines of iambic trimeter (with iambs denoting long and short syllables rather than accents; in my case, I tried to mostly stay true to alternating long-short syllables, with exceptions where comprehension demanded)

A caesura either appearing after syllable 5 or syllable 7, slightly off-setting the two sets of iambic trimeter.
The use of paroxytonic endings (the penultimate syllable of a line being stressed) was used sometimes but not as extensively as secondary sources recommend. Endings like "she coldly crumbled", "matching each pigment", and "in her brush or needle?" demonstrate the technique.

Aesthetic considerations:

How does one write about someone they love receiving an award for the excellent art? I decided to focus on the seemingly limitless effort Lady Adelaide dedicates to the fine precision of her work: the "unseen effort" that is "tasted still in final proof". Her work is "captivating through detail" because of her "careful hands".
I decided to let most of the poem work through an extended metaphor of the artist as a vintner, who has to tend and prepare the ground for working on art, whether a piece of parchment or fabric, and whose effort can often go unnoticed in the final product...unless it is absent! Finally, I wanted to stress the richness, joy, and intoxicating nature of her work.
Finally, my wine inspiration resulted in an allusion to the famous (if possibly apocryphal) story about Cleopatra crushing a pearl into her wine, an appropriate image for this award, which was originally recounted by Pliny, and a discussion of which can be found here: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/miscellanea/cleopatra/cabanel.html

An enormous amount of research came from the book Byzantine Poetry from Pisides to Geometres: Texts and Contexts by Marc D. Lauxtermann.

This exemplar shows the dots used as pauses in the Byzantine poetry, most frequently at caesura.

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