Errantry

Errantry is a three-page long poem by J.R.R. Tolkien, first published in 1933.

Tolkien commented it as "most attractive." It consists of a complex trisyllabic assonances with a metre that Tolkien invented, and was difficult enough that he never wrote another poem again in this style, though he later did develop another style from this, and the result was Eärendil the Mariner.

This poem was set to music by Donald Swann. The sheet music and an audio recording are part of the song-cycle The Road Goes Ever On.

Errantry later came to be categorised as a Hobbit poem from Middle-earth.

Extract

"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."