In Praise of Wayrest (c. 2E 663)

A controversial poet, Mielleton. Against Mielleton, there is Ezrail Direnni of Balfiera, who describes him as a "mercantile bumpkin whose only quality is a facility for the type of crass plebian verse more suitable for a commercial brochure than a poet's libretto." For Mielleton, there is Durz Ghonzon: "His great works were performed under discountenance and in blindness, but difficulties vanished at his touch; he was born for whatever is ardous; and his work is not the greatest of heroic poems, only because it is not the first."

Yet Mielleton is a hard-hitting controversialist. Long cherished only locally, as a nativist poet of Wayrest (nativist, hence provincial, hence irrelevant, in the eyes of his detractors), Mielleton has been one of the most argued-about poets of the Bay in recent discourse.

His love of his native Wayrest, which strikes some critics as excessive and fanatical, must be considered in light of the circumstances of his life; Wayrest, already eclipsed by Daggerfall's leadership under the Daggerfall covenant a century earlier, was in his youth subject to a string of devastating pirate raids out of Stros M'Kai by the Brethren of the Gold Coast, which resulted in the destruction of great part of the city (notably, during the Great Fire of Wayrest, c. 2E 615), as well as causing significant disruption to the city's trade, its primary source of livelihood. Within that context, Mielleton can be seen not as the brash xenophobe he is often made out to be, but rather as a much-needed beacon of hope shining upon a downtrodden city to rally its morale and remind it of its past glory, in order that it may awaken to reattain it. In this light, Mielleton is the conscience of a nation, whose call to a return to former glories amidst bleak and fearful times speaks not only to the people of Wayrest, but to all of Tamriel during the dark years of the Interregnum.

The following is an excerpt from "The Compleat Historie of the Grande Citie of Waye-Reste, Jewel of the Bay", an epic poem of over ten thousand lines of verse which is widely considered to be his magnum opus.

-Jobashi

Nary a shire, borough, town, nor hamlet,
In Dawn's Beauty°, Morr'wind to Summerset,
And all that Magnus-Hole° alights betwixt;
Nay, in Mundus Whole, all that ay exists,
Since Dawn's Era, till Alduin's dusky° Maw ^5
Engulf the Kalpa, and on th'Earth Bones° gnaw;
No City 'mperial, nor crystal Al'nor,
Darest ever match thy dearest Splendour.
Foremost of cities, tri-flower'd array°,
Unmatch'd in Wealth, priceless Jew'l of the Bay! ^10
If ever they durst thy primacy wrest,
Be they utmost wary: thou art Wayrest!

Jean Mielleton, 2^nd Era Breton Bard

Annotations by Ed.

^2 Dawn's Beauty Tamriel
^3 Magnus-Hole the sun (suggested in the previous line by the course from "morrow", i.e. morning, to "set", i.e. sunset)
^5 Dawn's...dusky again, Mielleton suggests the passage of the sun, this time temporally rather than spatially.
^6 th'Earth Bones the Ehlnofey
^9 tri-flower'd array referring to the crest of Wayrest