The Modern Middle Ages

Although we try to re-create the lore,
Connecting with the ways of those before,
I wonder just how accurate we can be
As we're encumbered by modernity.
How can we comprehend and understand
The motivations of medieval man?
We do not live our lives in constant fear
Of calamity and death so ever near;
Nor do we bear our arms into the fray
Expecting loss of limb or life today.
Our forebears ever answered Heaven's call.
Today, we hardly speak of it at all.
Completely foreign to us is the fright
Of all the nameless terrors in the night.
And when we gather to indulge in mirth,
Never seen is peasant, drudge, or serf.
Viking Theign sits next to Norman Knight
With a Persian Princess dining on his right.
We feast by candle light because we can,
Not because we must, as they did then.
Our garb and all our gear for chivalry
Owes less to craft, more to machinery.
The Middle Ages as they should have been
When modern conveniences are factored in.
Although great fun, our games are merely all
As true to life as shadows on the wall;
Reflections of a time that's ceased to be,
And lost within the mists of history.
We cannot really live within the past,
But in our play we let its echos last.