Originally Posted by The Complaint of Mim the Dwarf, Part 1
Under a mountain, in an impassable land
lay a deep hole, all filled with sand.
One evening Mim stood before his house
His back was bent, and his beard was grey.
Long paths he had wandered, homeless and cold
the petty-dwarf Mim, two hundred years old.
All he had made, the work of his hands,
of stylus and chisel, of labour unending,
stolen by fiends; only his life and some few pieces
of his crafts were left to him, and a long blade
in a sheath under tattered mantle, venom-smeared.
His clouded eyes had squinted, still reddened from smoke
when amid thorns and bracken he had found
his passage at last amidst the flames.
And thus came he here, choking and sickened.
Mim spat in the sand, and so began to speak:
Tink-tink-tink, tink-tonk, tonk-tonk, tink!
No time to eat, no time to drink, tonk-tink!
Tink-tonk, no time, tonk-tink, no time to waste!
No time to sleep! No night and no day, just haste!
Only silver and gold, hammered and formed and shaped
and small, hard stones, glittering and cold
Tink-tink, green and gold, tink-tink, blue and white
Under my hands quietly sprout and grow
long leaves and flowers, and red eyes glowing
of beasts and birds between branches and blossoms.
|