This Poem was based on a Robert W. Chambers short story

The Yellow Prince in Chains: A Sestina

It was done expressly to preserve the state;
The war being fought, it came very close
to defeat and for that they enchained their lord
until the omen came. The three-masted ship,
alongside a dinghy, welcomed the herald and his letter.
Never was there a more ominous mail.

The captain wore his armor-steel mail
reading about his nation’s sorry state.
He wept, folded the document, closed
the envelope and fled for his terrible lord.
Deep within the confines of that ship,
he revealed the sign to the very letter.

The imprisoned prince ignored the letter
staring at the captain with glistening mail.
He cared only for the broken state
he now found himself in. At the close
of this century a solitary lord
in yellow tatters chained aboard ship

would dictate the fate of nations, ships
blazing salvoes in the starlit night, ladders
to heaven cast in smoke and fire while mailed
messengers used its portals to dispense a state
of misery and woe pouring out their bowls:
This, the waking vision, of the saffron-scalloped lord.

A jolt, a flurry, "My lord, my lord!"
The warp and lurch of the galley ship
alarmed the prince to the recent letter
that could only have been written by a male,
for female pythians would never state
how to fight a war, but how to close.

"So this is how the volume closes."
Thought the terrible, fettered lord.
"Unchain me, captain, to save your ship",
he muttered, "Remember the letter!"
The captain clove the adamant chains,
"The gods be with you! Save our state!"

From below the ship, the loosed lord, mailed
in glowing letters stating doom, closed
upon the enemy, as it was written of old.