Update

Another update for those two or three of you who are following Nightgaunt's Realm. I have pretty much finished the next installment, but I'm going to hold off posting for a few days at least because I'm sure I'll want to change or add something.

In the fiction I have written before, it was always for fun and something I just enjoyed, and I am enjoying this also (or I wouldn't be doing it), but this time I am finding it to also be emotionally draining. I don't know if that means it's better or worse, but the effect it has on me is something new to me.

Here is a poem by Tennyson that I read several times while working on it.

Song

I.

A spirit haunts the year's last hours,
Dwelling amid these yellowing bowers:
To himself he talks;
For at eventide, listening earnestly,
At his work you may hear him sob and sigh
In the walks;
Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks
Of the mouldering flowers:
Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.

II.

The air is damp, and hushed, and close,
As a sick man's room when he taketh repose
An hour before death;
My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves
At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves,
And the breath
Of the fading edges of box beneath,
And the year's last rose.
Heavily hangs the broad sunflower
Over its grave i' the earth so chilly;
Heavily hangs the hollyhock,
Heavily hangs the tiger-lily.