Death Beneath the Wave

Cross starry plains and sunlit bowers,
The moon cries tears of icy flowers 
There the sky-bent river seeks
A soul to find and one to keep.
The water sprites, they danced last night,
Masked from all the mortals sight 
A soul drew night the rocks to sleep 
A bird from the cloudy skies did sweep.
They wove their nets from silken hair
Of a kelpie maiden fair 
They watched, they waited, and they heard
As that lone soul flew with the bird
And wandered close to take a drink 
One sip he took ere he did blink 
Quick were the sprites  their grip was tight
(It grew from the river waters might.)
They grasped the man, pulled him beneath
The surface like a wet and war-torn leaf.
He struggled once, he struggled twice 
But power was with the water sprites:
They brought him to their promised land
That long ago from earth was banned.
Beneath the earth, beneath the wave
Their underwater world was saved.
The full, bright moon shone solid through
The misty waves that dance anew
With every sliver of a note
From the song that life first wrote,
And yet the beauty of this world
For the nameless man was furled.
The playful sprites who stole his life
Did not expect the endless strife
That fights in a captive human heart
That, with its freedom, will not part.
The soul they found, the soul they kept,
That soul for its losses wept 
It would not play the kelpies games 
Never, never would it be tame.
And, weary of its cage, it withered
Until the prisoner was but a sliver
Of the one he once had been
Ere soul from earth was rend.
The moon had, by the sea, been quenched
When life from noble man was wrenched.
The playful sprites were innocent
(At least, of any ill intent.)
But harm was done  the song was sung
And lifes final bell had been rung.