Gwynplaine's Sentiment

Amidst the fog-wrapped coasts of France's sullen shore,
I was borne, a child plucked from humanity's womb—
a husk emptied, reshaped, molded by hands cruel and arcane.
O Heaven, did you witness the crime cast in your name?
Were your stars still fixed as mine fell from grace,
my face carved in grins by blades that spared no flesh nor soul,
leaving me bound forever to a smile that knew no mirth,
a grin in eternal mockery of all joy?
 
Look upon me, oh silent ones, whose pity wounds sharper than the steel—
for I am Gwynplaine, the jester forged in sorrow,
made spectacle to an indifferent crowd whose laughter is as knives.
I am the fool in whom the world sees not the torment,
the mask which hides my bleeding, shriveled heart.
O bitter veil, stitched with agony’s grim thread!
This visage—this laughing face—is a covenant unbroken,
a monument to the sins of men who sculpt and disfigure
in worship of their hollow lust for something monstrous,
something wretched, yet made to please.
 
Ursus, strange father of my fate, roamed with me through lands bleak and broken.
In your care I found respite, yet still the iron smile remained,
etched deep in the cradle of my face.
Ah, Ursus—who saw through the scars, who loved this fractured mask!—
could you not see the chasm within, where light dares not tread?
You, whose wisdom was as the gray wolf’s,
who nursed my soul, wounded but unyielding,
you taught me how to see the world through eyes that never weep,
and yet, in secret shadows, my heart bled ceaselessly.
 
Then—Dea, sightless angel of my ruin, my salvation—
O love more divine than the heavens permit,
with hands soft as whispers you traced the crevices of my agony,
yet you knew not the darkness your gentle touch unveiled.
Your sightless gaze beheld what none could see—
a soul concealed within flesh made monstrous by man’s decree.
Oh, Dea! Blind you were, but in that blindness did you not possess
a vision purer than any mortal eye?
For your heart saw not the deformity of my form
but the wretched beauty of a spirit imprisoned,
yearning for something as impossible as the dawn.
 
I stood before them—a spectacle in chains of their amusement.
They cheered, they laughed, in mockery and scorn,
oblivious to the tempest churning beneath this mask.
I—who bore the weight of their jeers, their ceaseless cruelty—
was I not the man cast adrift in a world that loved only my suffering?
They fashioned me as a freak to titillate their jaded senses,
an idol of torment, an icon of the obscene,
and yet, beneath their laughter, I found their pity more cruel still,
a mockery woven from threads of revulsion and intrigue.
 
So I wandered the corridors of fate, adrift, a specter clad in flesh,
seeking neither salvation nor solace but a place to lay my grief—
to bury it like bones in the earth, as cold and unyielding as stone.
I was a lover to sorrow, a companion to despair,
bound eternally to a smile that was not mine.
 
Even as the crown was placed upon my head,
a bitter wreath of triumph and deceit,
was I not still Gwynplaine, still broken, still weeping beneath the laughter?
Oh, the empty grandeur, the hollow pomp of gilded halls—
all mockeries of a life that knew no comfort, no peace.
Even in wealth and honor, I was yet a stranger to joy.
 
And when my end came—when the waves welcomed me,
when I cast myself into the arms of the deep,
I found in that dark ocean a peace denied me by the land.
No more the jester, no more the pawn of fate’s derision—
I surrendered at last, a soul freed from the masque.
And as the water closed over me,
I felt, for a moment, the memory of Dea’s touch,
a tender echo as soft as a sigh upon the waves.
 
Farewell, you who laugh in shadowed halls,
who revel in a joy I could never know.
Remember me not as Gwynplaine the wretch,
but as a soul lost to the cruelty of men,
a specter freed by sorrow, at last bound to no mask,
no chains of laughter, nor the haunting semblance of a smile.