The cheeseman

I think, often, of times long past.

Of ages far away from the here and now. Of days from whence came legend, and myth, and story.

Charlemagne, Robin Hood, Le Morte d'Arthur.

A time of kings and queens, lords and ladies, knights and generals, of tales of heroism and tragedy.

William of Normandy, who forged a kingdom and a four-hundred year dynasty with naught much more than the strength of his own will.

Elanor of Aquitaine, a wife to two kings and a mother to two more, who spoke with as much force as her husbands and her sons.

Bohemond of Antioch, who, when faced with overwhelming odds in the First Crusade, even yet hurled himself into the fray as a raging lion and pulled that holy mission from the very knife-edge of disaster.

Joan d'Arc, a young woman of no renown who rallied the people of Orleans to victory against the besieging English and personally crowned the young Dauphin as King Charles VII of France.

Sir William Marshal, a general and bodyguard to three kings who never lost a duel, conducted himself with the utmost chivalry, and who was inducted into the Knights Templar not long before his death.

Charles Martel, called The Hammer, stood his ground at the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D.; dominating the battlefield in spectacular fashion, cementing he and his descendants in European history.

The Battle of Montsisgard, where Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, called the Leper, stood against a force many times his own with the fate of his kingdom on the line, and emerged not merely victorious, but hounded his enemies all the way back to the Nile.

And the Fall of Constantinople on the Twenty-ninth of May, Fourteen Fifty-three, where Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last scion of Rome, raged against the dying of the light unto his last in the defense of his great city.

I long for times such as these.

Yet, I do not miss them. Not in truth.

I do not miss the savagery and brutality of those wars, I do not miss the plagues and famines.

These years... I miss the idea of them.

The chivalry, the heroism, the honor, the stories and myths and legends. The men and women who stood larger than life in these days long gone by.

The stones and monuments of Europe whisper still of their lives and tales and achievements. The cathedrals, the castles, the towers, the palaces. The names of cities, countries, even fields and rivers give reverence and memory to an age far away.

They stood long before I was born, and even so shall they stand long after I am gone.