Gather round children 
Another tale I have to tell
This one is of magic lost, of pride, 
The cost and more beside
But gather now. Hush. Be still.

Back when I was as young as you, 
It was known that creatures dwelt
Out of sight of those who sought them, 
But their presence often felt.
Fey, sprite, pixie, gnome -
They lived in verse and glens
While dragons, wrights, gibblens
Hid in nightmarish loathsome dens

I once saw a dragon's lair - 
It's mountain home spat fireballs
Great devastation all about
Molten rivers coursed its halls;
And a mighty serpent lived on the coast
Or so I heard it said
Its thrashing turned whole cliffs to sand
And left the land uninhabited

But no more - these all are gone
The mountain home -  green grows its flanks
And it is to a mighty sorcerer 
To whom we owe our thanks

* * * * *

He shuffles, to stand upon the dias
He throws his jewelled hands to full extent
His sleeves ruck down at gravity's bias
And his spindle arms are not unbent
For his cloak is trimmed with beards of Kings
Each knotted, bejewelled, coruscates
He sags with knowledge quite overpowering 
The weight of potent pelts of potentates

In the chamber’s corner a broom lies shattered
It catches his eye - he looks apprehensive 
Sapped of magic it somehow mattered
To ensure the tool remained unoffensive
And, chanting still, he ruminates  
On the many apprenticed to learn his trade
And the way each met their miserable fates
And why he decided that magic should fade.

For over the span of his millennia life
None succeeded in taking his place
The power itself proved the subtlest knife 
None had lived long enough to resign in disgrace
With inevitable pull from their first incantation
A surfeit of magic could never be reached
And took each student to their obliteration 
As secretly, subtly his instruction was breached

One necromantic lacked the required control 
And her servants consumed her sliver by sliver
A voodooist became possessed by his doll
And - fully pincushioned - finally punctured his liver. 
Conjurors misconjured things without names
That devoured their minds with the light of a wisp
And then turned on their bodies when done with their brains
Pyromancers simply burnt to a crisp

He would take no more students after the last
The one that confronted with one simple chore 
Reached for the spellbook and deftly miscast 
A blight of broomsticks that then waged a war.
To avoid the task for all time he made his tools self-renew
And when done with the sweeping they had to sweep more
So they made a clean sweep and then overthrew 
All life before them and multiplied more
Each broom-head a hydra; each twig a seed, 
Take a hatchet to these you create a score more
How do you kill that which can’t bleed?
Like the remains of that brush now smashed on the floor
It twitches - it moves - it begins to reform
The Sorcerer’s chant swells to deafening roar
Then deafening silence though he stands in a storm
Of colour and light - now the broom’s by the door 
It advances with menace - then a blink and a pop
The broom is unmade, fades, is no more. 
And the sorcerer spent can finally stop. 

He gathers his cloak as magic retreats
And briefly looks nonplussed 
And then smiles satisfied at his greatest of feats
And crumbles away into dust. 

* * * * *

And that children, is how I heard it told
By an old man as I to you,
And as I promise he promised me
That all he told was true
And when I asked was magic there
When he was as young as I 
He said he was told the self same tale
By a truth-teller passing by