Errantry

There was a merry passenger,
a messenger, a mariner:
he built a gilded gondola
to wander in, and had in her
a load of yellow oranges
and porridge for his provender;
he perfumed her with marjoram
and cardamom and lavender.
He called the wind of argosies
with cargoes in to carry him
across the rivers seventeen
that lay between to tarry him.
he landed all in loneliness
where stonily the pebbles on
the running river derrilyn
goes merrily for ever on.
he journeyed then through meadow-lands
to shadow-land that dreary lay,
and under hill and over hill
went roving still a weary way.

he sat and sang a melody,
his errantry a-tarrying;
he begged a pretty butterfly
that fluttered by to marry him.
she scorned him and she scoffed at him,
she laughed at him upitying
so long he studied wizardry
and sigaldry and smithying.

he wove a tissue airy-thin
to snare her in; to follow her
he made him beetle-leather wing
and feather wing of swallow hair.
he caught her in bewilderment
with filament of spider-thread;
he made her soft pavilions
of lilies, and a bridal bed
of flowers and of thistle-down
to nestle down and rest her in;
and silken webs of filmy white
and silver light he dressed her in.
He threaded gems in necklaces,
but recklessly she squandered them
and fell to bitter quarrelling;
then sorrowing he wandered on,
and there he left her withering,
as shivering he fled away;
with windy weather following
on swallow-wing he sped away.

he passed the archipelagoes
where yellow grows the marigold,
where countless silver fountains are,
and mountains are of fairy-gold.
he took to war and foraying,
a-harrying beyond the sea,
and roaming over belmarie
and thellamie and fantasie.
He made a shield and morion
of coral and of ivory,
a sword he made of emerald,
and terrible his rivalry
with elven-knights of aerie
and faerie, with paladins
that golden-haired and shining-eyes
came riding by and challenged him.
Of crystal was his habergeon,
his scabbard of chalcedony;
with silver tipped at plenilune
his spear was hewn of ebony.
his javelins were of malachite
and stalactite - he brandished them,
and went and fought the dragon-flies
of paradise, and vanquished them.

he battled with the dumbledors,
the hummerhorns, and honeybees,
and won the golden honeycomb;
and running home on sunny seas
in ship of leaves and gossamer
with blossom for a canopy,
he sat and sang, and furbished up
and burnished up his panoply.

he tarried for a little while
in little isles that lonely lay,
and found there naught but blowing grass;
and so at last the only way
he took, and turned, and coming home
with honeycomb, to memory
his message came, and errand too!
in derring-do and glamoury
he had forgot them, journeying
and tourneying, a wanderer.
so now he must depart again
and start again his gondola,
for ever still a messenger,
a passenger, a tarrier,
a-roving as a feather does,
a weather-driven mariner.