Tuesday Nov 04, 2025
The Cowardly Lion’s Lament | Lyrical Literacy (Oz Sung)
The Incantation Is Hitting Play
In Harry Potter, you say Expecto Patronum and the guardian appears. You concentrate on your happiest memory — specific, embodied, irreducibly yours — and something silver emerges to stand between you and the thing that drains the warmth from the world.
In Spirit Songs, the spell has already been cast. The incantation happened when someone gave the Cowardly Lion a first-person voice — not the narrator's description of his trembling, not the Scarecrow's patient observation of his fear, but the Lion's own account of what it was like to be the thing he was: large, loud, visibly terrified, and aware of the contradiction.
When a child who has been afraid — who has hidden from the rustle and the breeze, who knows what it is to have a roar that their body contradicts — hears cowardice is where I begin / and courage is what I carry in — that is not the spell beginning.
That is the spell landing.
The Spell: The Cowardly Lion's Lament
What Baum Showed and the Poem Says
In Baum's original text, the Cowardly Lion is introduced as a character performing bravado. He roars at Dorothy and her companions. He is, in fact, frightened of them. The bravado is the Lion's attempt to manage the gap between what he is expected to be — jungle king, apex predator, the most fearsome creature in the forest — and what he actually experiences: fear of nearly everything.
Baum shows this gap through behavior and through the Lion's direct speech. The Cowardly Lion in the novel says, plainly, that he is a coward. He asks the wizard for courage. He receives, eventually, a bottle of liquid courage — a placebo, in the terminology the Musinique Oz curriculum has already established — that works because the courage was always there and the bottle gave the Lion permission to use it.
The poem gives the Lion the sentence that neither Baum's narrator nor the wizard's recognition ceremony fully supplied: the first-person account of what the transformation actually felt like from the inside. Not what happened to the Lion. What the Lion was.
I may not roar with thunder's might / but still I roar and still I fight. This is not the wizard's validation. This is the Lion's own witness. The difference is the spell.
The Dementor: The Gap Between What You Are Supposed to Be and What You Are
My roar was loud, my mane was fine / but fear made cowards of beasts like mine.
The Dementor this spell protects against is the specific suffering of the expectation gap — the experience of having impressive external markers (a loud roar, a fine mane, the social expectation of jungle kingship) while experiencing an interior reality that those markers cannot honestly represent.
Every child knows this experience in some form. The child who is supposed to be brave because they are big. The child who is supposed to be confident because they are talented. The child who is supposed to be okay because their circumstances appear fine. The gap between the external presentation and the interior reality is one of the most isolating experiences available to a developing person, because it is double: not only the fear, but the shame of the fear, the sense that the fear is a particular failure given what you are supposed to be.
A rustle? Run. A breeze? I'd hide / though jungle kings should stand with pride. The parenthetical though jungle kings should stand with pride is the poem's acknowledgment of the gap from the Lion's own perspective. He knows what he should be. He knows that he is not it. The gap is what produces shame rather than simply fear.
The spell does not eliminate the gap. It reframes what the gap means.
The Reframe: Cowardice as Starting Point, Not Identity
For I have learned through doubt and din / that cowardice is where I begin / and courage is what I carry in.
These three lines contain the poem's central argument, and it is philosophically distinct from the most common children's-literature treatment of courage.
The common treatment: you were always brave, you just didn't know it yet. The wizard's bottle was a placebo. The courage was inside you all along. The journey revealed what was already there. This is the argument of the traditional Oz narrative, and it is true and useful as far as it goes.
The Lion's argument goes further. Cowardice is where I begin. Not where I was before I discovered my courage. Where I begin — present tense, ongoing, the starting condition each time. Every step is a beginning from the cowardice. The courage is not a discovered capacity that replaces the fear. It is what gets carried through the fear. The cowardice does not disappear. It is the origin point from which courage departs.
This is a more accurate and more durable account of how courage actually works — and it is the argument that makes the poem's final line its most important claim rather than its most conventional one. And courage is what I carry in — into the fear, into the shaking, into every situation that requires the thing he does not automatically possess. Courage is not what he has. It is what he carries. The distinction is the spell.
For a child who has been told that their fear will go away when they are brave enough — who is waiting for the state in which the fear is absent before they can act — the Lion's account offers something more useful: the fear will not go away. The carrying happens anyway. That is what courage is.
The Companions as Witnesses
Then came a girl with storm-washed shoes / a tinman dented by old blues / a straw-stuffed man who sought his brain / and welcomed me despite my shame.
The four companions in the Oz narrative are the children's literature version of what psychologists call a holding environment: a set of relationships that can contain a person's difficulty without being threatened by it, that remain stable while the person is unstable, that do not require the person to perform health before offering connection.
And welcomed me despite my shame. This line is the poem's description of what the companions did, stated in the Lion's voice. They did not require the Lion to be brave before including him. They did not make his inclusion contingent on resolving his cowardice. They walked the road with him while he trembled, which is the specific form of accompaniment that makes the trembling traversable.
For a child, this is a description of the specific kind of relationship that makes difficult things possible: not the relationship that solves the difficulty, but the relationship that remains present while the difficulty is happening. The tinman dented by old blues cannot make the Lion brave. The straw-stuffed man seeking his own brain cannot give the Lion courage. But they can walk the road, and the walking together is what makes the road walkable.
The poem names this as the condition of the Lion's growth: not a wizard's intervention, but a fellowship of imperfect companions who welcomed him despite his shame.
Courage as Proximity, Not Absence
Now thrones may gleam and trumpets cheer / but courage is the act of near / the trembling breath, the shaky paw / that walks through fear and stands in awe.
Courage is the act of near is the poem's most compressed philosophical claim, and it rewards dwelling on.
Near is not brave. Near is not the absence of fear. Near is simply: moved toward rather than away from. The trembling breath is present — the fear is present. The shaky paw is present — the body is registering the fear in the body. What makes these courage is not that they are steady. What makes them courage is the direction they are moving.
This is a redefinition of courage that has significant pedagogical implications. If courage is the absence of fear, then the child who is afraid cannot be courageous — they must wait for the fear to leave before acting. If courage is the act of near, then the child who is trembling and moving forward is being courageous right now, in this moment, with the trembling intact.
The distinction matters for how children understand their own experience. The child who is told they were brave when they went to the doctor will often respond: but I was scared. Yes, and. The scaredness and the bravery were simultaneous. The bravery was the going, not the absence of the scaredness.
The Lion articulates this distinction in four lines, in a melody, before the child has been asked to apply it to themselves.
Nik Bear Brown and the Voice That Has Been Afraid
Nik Bear Brown's deep warm baritone is the voice delivering the Lion's first-person account. The choice is specific to what first-person confession requires.
The Lion's Lament is not a third-person observation of courage. It is the account of a creature who has experienced the gap between expectation and reality, has been ashamed of it, has walked anyway, and is now giving the full testimony from the inside. The voice required is not the narrator's — it is the witness's. The person who was there in the trembling and can report it accurately because they survived it.
Nik Bear Brown's work in the protest tradition, in the gospel tradition, in the spoken word tradition, is consistently the voice of someone who has been through something and is reporting it straight. The Beatitudes as operational instruction. The darkness that is also holy. The price of eggs. This is the tradition that can carry cowardice is where I begin without performing humility and without making the vulnerability a spectacle. It is the statement of a person who knows what they are saying and trusts it to be received.
The Lion's testimony requires that kind of voice. Not the voice that is performing bravery now that the danger is past. The voice that is still in the truth of what it was.
The Maker's Concentration
Someone concentrated on the distinction between discovering courage and carrying it.
The easy version of this poem ends with the wizard's medal: I was afraid, I walked the road, I was recognized, I am brave now. The bottle worked. The fear is resolved.
The poem that was made ends differently. Cowardice is where I begin / and courage is what I carry in. The fear is not resolved. The beginning point does not change. What changes is the understanding that the beginning point is not the identity — it is the starting condition for every act of movement, every step toward rather than away, every trembling breath that continues anyway.
The AI built the narrative arc — the forest, the companions, the poppy fields, the wizard, the medal. What required the maker was the final claim: that the most honest account of courage positions cowardice not as the obstacle to be overcome but as the permanent starting point from which courage departs.
That is harder. That is more useful. That is the spell.
The making was the incantation.
The child who is trembling and moving forward — who has learned that this is not a failure of courage but its precise definition — that child is the spell delivered.
The Cowardly Lion’s Lament | Lyrical Literacy (Oz Sung)
The Lyrical Literacy podcast presents a heartfelt exploration of courage through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion from Oz. This poignant first-person narrative follows the lion's transformative journey from self-doubt to self-discovery. Despite his impressive roar and majestic mane, he initially hides from the smallest disturbances, ashamed of his fear. The poem beautifully tracks his growth as he joins Dorothy and her companions through dangerous terrain, facing his fears with each trembling step. By the conclusion, the Lion discovers the profound truth that courage isn't the absence of fear but the willingness to continue despite it—revealing that true bravery begins with acknowledging one's vulnerabilities.
Origin
This poem is inspired by the character of the Cowardly Lion from "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," written by L. Frank Baum and published in 1900. In the original story, the Cowardly Lion joins Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman on their journey to the Emerald City, seeking courage from the Wizard. The novel has become a beloved classic of American children's literature and entered the public domain in 1956.
The Cowardly Lion’s Lament
LYRICS:
In a forest deep where shadows creep
I paced alone afraid to leap
My roar was loud my mane was fine
But fear made cowards of beasts like mine
I dreamed of courage bold and bright
But trembled at the smallest fright
A rustle? Run A breeze? I'd hide
Though jungle kings should stand with pride
Then came a girl with storm-washed shoes
A tinman dented by old blues
A straw-stuffed man who sought his brain
And welcomed me despite my shame
Through poppy fields and haunted wood
I followed where the brave ones stood
Each step a quake each choice a test
Yet still I marched though not the best
In Oz I knelt before the flame
And found a medal not just fame
But proof I'd faced my deepest scare
And chose to stay though I could tear
Now thrones may gleam and trumpets cheer
But courage is the act of near
The trembling breath the shaky paw
That walks through fear and stands in awe
I may not roar with thunder's might
But still I roar and still I fight
For I have learned through doubt and din
That cowardice is where I begin
And courage is what I carry in
#CowardlyLion #WizardOfOz #CourageJourney #LyricalLiteracy #ChildrensClassics #BaumInspired #FindingBravery #FacingFears #LionHeart #MusicalStorytelling
Nik Bear Brown
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0hSpFCJodAYMP2cWK72zI6?si=9Fx2UusBQHi3tTyVEAoCDQ
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/nik-bear-brown/1779725275
https://nikbear.musinique.com
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