LITMIR.BIZ

      When others went to bed in hay, fern, or feather,

      close in the inglenook they laid their heads together,

      old Tom and Muddy-feet, swapping all the tidings

      from Barrow-downs to Tower Hills: of walkings and of ridings;

      of wheat-ear and barley-corn, of sowing and of reaping;

      queer tales from Bree, and talk at smithy, mill, and cheaping;

      rumours in whispering trees, south-wind in the larches,

      tall Watchers by the Ford, Shadows on the marches.

      Old Maggot slept at last in chair beside the embers.

      Ere dawn Tom was gone: as dreams one half remembers,

      some merry, some sad, and some of hidden warning.

      None heard the door unlocked; a shower of rain at morning

      his footprints washed away, at Mithe he left no traces,

      at Hays-end they heard no song nor sound of heavy paces.

      Three days his boat lay by the hythe at Grindwall,

      and then one morn was gone back up Withywindle.

      Otter-folk, hobbits said, came by night and loosed her,

      dragged her over weir, and up stream they pushed her.

      Out from Elvet-isle Old Swan came sailing,

      in beak took her painter up in the water trailing,

      drew her proudly on; otters swam beside her

      round old Willow-man’s crooked roots to guide her;

      the King’s fisher perched on bow, on thwart the wren was singing,

      merrily the cockle-boat homeward they were bringing.

      To Tom’s creek they came at last. Otter-lad said: ‘Whish now!

      What’s a coot without his legs, or a finless fish now?’

      O! silly-sallow-willow-stream! The oars they’d left behind them!

      Long they lay at Grindwall hythe for Tom to come and find them.

      

      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 cardamon and lavender.

      He called the winds 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 unpitying;

      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

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