The Griffin

A poem.

Illustration from John Vinycomb’s Fictious and Symbolic Creatures in Art (1906). Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The Griffin

Some say the griffin dwells
Within the rosy East
In some dry zone
Where cliffs of stone 
Give shelter to the beast.

It rests within the cells
Inside those sandstone towers
And at the dawn
It greets the morn
With full display of powers:

Its beak will open wide 
And cry an eagle’s shriek 
And all the land 
Of desert sand
Will lie subdued and meek —

The wings which lie each side
Of its sleek lion-form
Will then be spread
While sunbeams shed
Their radiance, bright and warm —

Its feathers, brown and gold,
Will glitter in the light
With shining flecks
As it will flex
While it prepares for flight.

It had been known of old 
To shepherds of the plain
Where it would steal
A tasty meal
And then come back again.

Each time, a lamb or kid
Was taken from the flock —
Those fearsome paws
Had giant claws
Which pierced through haunch and hock —

And when it came amid
The ewes and fattened rams
The woolly crowd
Would bleat aloud 
To mourn their helpless lambs.

With wing-beats swift and strong
It launches into air —
The hybrid thing
Now takes to wing
In search of daily fare —

And then, before too long,
It hastens in return
With bloody meat
In its clawed feet 
For which its children yearn —

For if such creatures breed
Within the desert waste 
There must be young
Which dwell among
The cliffs, in nests well-placed.

But what the griffins need
Grows scarcer over time —
The shepherd’s flocks
On desert rocks
No longer creep and climb.

Although their kind might feast
On ibex, hogs, and deer,
In this dry land
Of rock and sand
Too few of them appear —

And so it seems the beast
Has disappeared at last.
No longer seen
Where it had been
It fades into the past.

It lives on in the tales
And legends from of old —
If not alive 
It will survive
When stories are retold.

Or else, as evening pales,
Perhaps some still catch sight
Of that strange beast 
As in the East
The skyline turns to night.

*

Paintings by Nicolas Roerich (1874-1947) of Timur Khada in Mongolia. Source: Wikimedia Commons, First Painting, Second Painting.

Poem © Metrical Poet 2026.

Social preview image is a cropped screenshot of this picture from Wikimedia Commons, showing a plaque depicting a griffin from an old Assyrian trading colony, ca. 18th Century BCE, currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.