An Elegy for a Forgotten Artist

On bookshelves where the dust could settle,

In tomes whose pages sought no friends,
Where most lack mind and heart to meddle,
He found answers, though they made no sense. 

They knew the few who cared to see them,
The stays were always very brief,
They could do nothing but condemn,
All men who crumbled at their feet.

When he and they were once the same,
Fate turned and looked the other way,
It liked to play a pointless game,
With winners crowned another day.

At brighter times, the glare could blind,
At dusk, lament came out of spite,
The uninvited guest, they'd find,
Would always smite with all its might.

The bard would sing but not believe,
And yet his bitter words were true.
"What did they hope they would achieve?
Now they are those we hardly knew".

In lonely, long-forgotten corners,
The withered ones are rarely desperate,
Belonging to disbanded orders,

They have their long-desired respite.