Chivalry Overthrown

Chivalry has not heaved his last breath
He lingers in prison and yet has cheated death
His armor has gotten heavy through lack of use or polish
and the brilliance of his shield is diminished.

Without a cause for lack of a plea for aid
by the bride of Christ or a fair maid,
Chivalry has been put down and chained by the new tyrant
whose concern is the reign of Satan and has enforced it most violent

This jailer will stop at nothing to bury the past,
rewrite history, or discolor the facts.
This vision he has strived for most brave
and to hide his honest competitor he has dug for him a false grave.

The world now no longer knows
What kept society together and fought its foes,
No longer to see a standard for young men to live by
Or for a lady to know that aid is nigh.

Chivalry sheds tears and lets them flow from his brave face,
Seeing society change color from virtue fused into disgrace.
His reputation blackened or forgotten,
He watches the new heroes, who from a modern age are now begotten.

Sin has taken the place of common morality, corruption for honesty, egoism for selflessness, and shame for decency,
The fountain of youth has been poisoned by the false waters of material treasure, which are put to use at Satan's pleasure

What can one do when religion is ignored,
God disbelieved, fidelity abhorred,
natural virtue unachieved
and our Divine Master's burden unrelieved?

All this has replaced what the noble knight, now an almost broken soul, remembered dazzled in days of yore
The strain is too much, the memory to vivid
and anger at injustice shows in his face most livid

He had held the hand of Charlamagne
and fought alongside Ferdinand of Castile
while he charged the walls of Jerusalem with Godfrey
forcing the crescent to yield.

By his aid Morocco was repelled
Spain saved, Islam itself quelled
Vienna was liberated under his brave eye
As Poland drove the infidels from sunrise to sky.

As these noble memories fade away from his thoughts
Chivalry painfully limps to the window of his cell that smells of decay and rot
to Valor, his comrade-in-arms, in the adjacent cell, who was also left to wither,
where the two talk of when they will break free and fight back together

A few sighs escape and several tears flow out of the prison to be picked up by some curious passerby who in surprise will see
The hundreds of years of good deeds of young men whose only cause was God through Chivalry.