Before the winter comes
Make peace with your gods
For no hope lasts with men
When the summer sets
I feel the gusts of September's wind
It calls to me, to a fixture in my past
Of the day that a season found me
And left its mark upon my visions

My kingdom cold is fast approaching
I still remember my first view of vastness
White fire swept clean the earth
Leaving desolate the plains of this world
A glacial reckoning of what's to come
Tree bark splits and crystals form
beginning of a new chapter
Turn the page to see what happens

Archaic in an aftermath
Before the start of autumnal collapse
Batten down the hatches
Prepare for a pale darkness
O, winter is coming
Mother Nature and Mother Earth conspire
To end the infernal months
And begin illustrious duration

Glisten for me precious seasons
You give freedom to my words
On hands and knees I beg
Release me from perpetual scorn
Gazing upon grey skies
Watchful for signs of life
That clouds of dark split wide
A rift for snowfall deep inside

When the warmth begins to fade
I feel pleasure in my knowledge
That once the forest bleeds
Old Man Winter shall rear his head
The one eyed wanderer
Two crows circling the sky
Might spear Gungnir in hand
Trudging through depths on land

Gift from the heavens
So majestic in your movement
I call to thee
Beseeched to an early arrival
I was born as a son of the frost
Destined as a prophet of cold
A soothing shade of winter
In a forest murdered by ice

This is my path through life
To impeach the genesis of spring
Endure the harshness of heat
And pray for my beloved's return
The drudkh of forests charred
Burned by a cold sliver fire
Still in woodlands, stillborn wood
Born of ash in an ancient world

Return to the cradle of life
Zenith of a grandiose design
Watch the stars as I become skyclad
The progeny of pagan gods
As much a son as I am a daughter
Borne of the tempered water
The temple of temperance
A dedication to absence of progress

Soaring 'cross the ageless sky
Black ravens of a smouldering high
Feathering falling of symbolic might
A prophecy of what lies in sight
A blanket of death precedes you
The forest floor, a graveyard
Before duality encompasses all
Smothering all that was left behind

Abandon all that you've ever known
The compass points towards what north is shown
A journey to my point of dawning
Where the goddess birthed me, at the edge of a world
Universal inheritance
Weightless and drifting
When the polar winds are blowing
Where the solar winds are growing

I watch lifeblood drain away
Bathed in frost from a thawed domain
Realm drenched in white, life withers away
A legend of reborn immortality
Stare into the reflecting pools
But don't step through
A muted glistening, listening
Close to the nocturne