Treasure Trove

Out of a wooden world of long benched halls
and horns of mead. Rise garnets of blood red
from India: the finest  Byzantine
silver, and beads of blue Italian glass.
The eye is teased: bewildered, held in thrall 
by niello accents etched on Frankish gold.
Fantastic creatures-- abstract, ribbon-like,
whose convolutions suddenly will end
in mean and jewelled head-- reveal themselves.
Not as a maze, or Celtic version of  
a wandering Greek key-- but 'Dark Age'-- Norse.
Whose truths and myths ferment the English soul.