The Lament of the Unhatched Sun: A Mythic Nonsense Ballad

The Lament of the Unhatched Sun

A sun unborn, a world held back,

A shell uncracked, a sky pitch-black.

The dawn lay curled in golden sleep,

While time itself forgot to creep.

The moon grew bored of endless night,

It whispered soft, "This isn't right."

And stars unlit around her brayed,

"The yolk still dreams, the shell still speaks—

The birth of fire must wait for weeks!"

Then came a thief, both sly and spry,

Who stole the egg of unborn skies,

He tripped, he slipped, he cracked it wide—

And daylight spilled both far and wide.

But stars now grumble, lost in glare,

The moon, bereft, just hangs in air,

The thief still runs through endless shade,

Still hums a tune that night has made.

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Exploring the Mythic Fabric of the Unhatched Sun

The Lament of the Unhatched Sun draws upon deep mythological undercurrents while maintaining the absurd, dreamlike quality of nonsense verse. Here, the notion of the sun as an egg waiting to hatch places the imagery within a primordial, cosmic framework, while the trickster figure disrupts the expected order of time itself.

Cosmic Hesitation and the Suspension of Time

The opening stanza presents an eternal, unfulfilled dawn—an arrested moment of cosmic potential. This unhatched sun suggests an uneasy balance, where time itself is stalled. Mythologically, such liminal states often precede a momentous shift or creation event. Here, that shift is delayed, giving an air of quiet expectancy.

The Trickster as Agent of Disruption

Like Loki of Norse mythology or Coyote of indigenous American traditions, the thief enters as an agent of chaotic change. His actions are not preordained by grand cosmic design; rather, he stumbles into world-altering consequences. His theft is neither heroic nor villainous—it simply is, much like many mythic tricksters who defy rigid moral categorisation.

Meaning in the Aftermath

The closing stanza leaves the reader in an ambiguous space. The sun is released, but harmony is not restored. The stars lament, the moon lingers in loss, and the thief, perhaps regretting his actions or merely following his own logic, remains in the shadows. The reader must decide: was this the necessary unfolding of events, or an irreversible mistake?

By framing cosmic transformation as an accident, The Lament of the Unhatched Sun invites multiple interpretations—fate versus folly, creation versus destruction, light as a gift or a theft. In this way, it both builds on mythological traditions and playfully subverts them, as all great nonsense poetry does.