For this assignment in my writing class, we were supposed to write about someone who decides to give up the security of a job they do not like in order to take another job that they think will make them happier.
For the most part, serving as Court Poet to King Godfrey III of Orfland had its perks. I ate four meals a day prepared in the king’s kitchen, I had a furnished room in the palace with southern exposure, and I did not have to engage in any physical labor.
I must admit that my skills as a poet were not significantly above average. In fact, they might even have been below average. When given enough time I could write sonnets in the traditional forms, of course, but under pressure I tended to overlook some of the more conventional ideas regarding the proper use of meter. When it came to rhyming, I could usually produce a word that rhymed when needed; the problem was that the word was not always appropriate to the situation.
But the fact that I was not a very good poet did not matter much, for King Godfrey was not a very good king. Don’t get me wrong: he was a good person, and the kingdom got along just fine under his rule. But he was the kind of king whose only mention in the history books would be “son of King X” and “father of King Y.”
If Godfrey had been a great king, going around conquering nations and stuff like that, then he would have needed a great poet to compose great poems about his great deeds. But a mediocre poet was good enough for him. He probably could have done without a poet completely, and he probably only kept me on because a king’s court is supposed to have a poet.
Mediocre poet to a mediocre king was an acceptable life, and I probably would have stuck with it until retirement, except for the fact that in the course of trying to improve my poetic skills, I read too much poetry.
Thus, when the course of my duties led me to entertain a party at which a certain young lady whom I found to be most particularly worthy of my attention mentioned that she could only love a man who had proven his boldness in battle, I instantly decided that my days as a poet were numbered. My new career would be as a knight, so that I could win the Love of this woman. (Since my skills as an artist are far worse than my skills as a poet, you must imagine that the L in the word Love has been painstakingly illuminated with intricate designs of flowers, for so had it appeared in many a volume of poems.)
That night as I lay abed, I thought of how I would imitate