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a collection of literature from poets, bards, songwriters, and skalds in the SCA

To Change Thy Name Should Not Be Lightly Done

dunstan's picture
dunstan
Poem (Canso): 
To change thy name should not be lightly done
When one’s identity no longer suites.
For all the recognition you have won
May vanish in the change; this none refutes.

Perhaps it’s done because one day you find
You would prefer another era’s drinks
Perchance a friend tells you, in ways unkind,
Your accent, like a privy, sometimes stinks.

Whatever reason, now you’ve changed your ways.
You sign a different name on letters sent.
And as a different soul you spend your days
But friend, for you I think I must lament.

You went from sounding like a tasty beer
To sounding like a frog I’d like to spear.

Documentation / Explanation (Razo): 

This sonnet makes reference to a fellow poet’s change of moniker. It is done in the tradition of the classic Shakespearean sonnet as far as rhyme and meter scheme (Iambic pentameter, 14 lines with an abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme). Poking fun at fellow poets of the time was quite a period thing to do, and Shakespeare often made references in his sonnets to fellow writers and poets of the time like Johnson and Southhamptons. This piece is primarily meant to be a jesting lament over the loss of a perfectly good Russian and the creation of yet another Frenchman in the SCA.