Influences: An actual cabin and specific times with friends there (originally an idea of a happier kind of "Bob Dylan's Dream" from the Freewheelin' album) and experiences there with sojourners and wandering Arameans; J. R. R. Tolkien's "Cottage of Lost Play" (for best explanation, see John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War); Leonard Cohen's "Sisters of Mercy"
The Cabin of Lost Play
In a valley deep with hemlock
Is a cabin made of stone
By a stream of dreams and memories
Up and down on which it flows
Round it bright new terraces
Host grand gatherings of today
But shrouded in their midst between two ancient trees
Dwells the Cabin of Lost Play
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The hands that formed and kept it
have long since lain down into its earth
The hands that tend and keep it now
Are worn but steady in the work
Guiding stream and earth and stone
Each in its own way
before the winds that drive the travels
Of the Cabin of Lost Play
***************************************
Some there are who’ve known it well
resting by its hearth of stone
Who travel far into the world
from its warmth and table, shining like good gold
To learn the speech of far and wide
And all lands along the way
To tell the tales of many folk
In the Cabin of Lost Play
***************************************
And they return to it at whiles
with young wanderers from the way
to share songs of mercy’s shelter
at the end of weary days
leaving nights of sleepless travel
for deep dreams until the day
While firelight dances on the walls
Within the Cabin of Lost Play
***************************************
Some seek this cabin many years,
but search for it in vain
Others stumble on it’s refuge,
as if by mistake
It tends and keeps the sorrowed souls,
while lost upon their way
And returns in dreams and memories
of the Cabin of Lost Play
***************************************
The lights that line its terraces
Glow with the joy of feasts today
Where these good souls oft notice not
A softer light beside the way
Yet crumbled leaves that rustle,
across its pitted floor,
spring to firelight and laughter,
if you chance upon the cabin’s door.
Then share it with the others,
with whom you share the way,
however long your need may last,
In the Cabin of Lost Play.
