The Jewel of Fairyland

                                Part One

"Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth!" piped Mustardseed.
Then, flickering like fireflies, all three
Came fluttering:"Sweet Elf! What dost thou need?"
"Hush! Furious Queen Titania summons thee!"
"Indeed, how have we injured her? With glee
We've graced her gambols and on yellow sands
We've danced in moonlight revels, when the sea
Was green and smoothe as glass we've taken hands
And shaken ringlets in the breeze at her commands!"

Then whisp'ry Cobweb drifts unto the side
Of fiery Mustardseed like a caress
And soothes her heat and lisps: "Confide
In us! Thou at the fairy court are less
Benighted on all consequence. Confess
The way things seemed in thy veracity,
Despite their usual confounded mess".
"The earth has rolled and vexed has been the sea,
So I'll recount to thee the whole catastrophe.

"This vast fiasco centers on the jewel,
The fondling minion of all Fairy Land,
Amera: she herself has caused the duel!
For Queen Titania, with her mighty hand,
With all the greatest bards at her command,
Contrived instruction in poetic arts:
Our pixie moppet soon surpassed the grand;
Our changeling, guarded from the golden darts
Of mischief making Cupid who loves smashing hearts.

"When thou repaired to trace the Western wild
Through woodlands tending berry, blossom, bee,
Our changeling maiden's spirit was beguiled,
Titania claims, by monstrous sorcery.
King Oberon has, in his deviltry,
When we Amera crowned as Fairy Queen
Of our May Festival, in charmed decree,
Beseems King Oberon somehow had seen
It fit to bring hobgoblin Puck upon the scene.

"So Queen Titania in her rage proclaims".
"Sharp Mustardseed! She ever was a fay
That no magician in all Niffleheim's
Been capable of quashing when affray
Had sparked her flinty heart, to our dismay.
Her cholor's roused to fury by a gnat!
Perchance our graceful changeling protege
Has charmed some mortal soul, and that
Someone's ensorcelled in an honorable chat?"

"When we were dancing at the fairy ball,
The elfin magic of her radiant face
Ensnared some gentleman in passion's fall:
A man who trespassed in our trysting place
And whirled with her in an embrace
Was lost the moment that he, so unwise,
Espied her beauty and her winsome grace.
His mortal soul was lost within her eyes!
Our fairy princess poet whom all elvish prize.

"You know Titania has a royal rage.
King Oberon himself's a testy boar.
Before they queried either prince or page
They claimed the wonted wrath they had before:
In high orations Oberon forswore
Titania's company. Our queen, in turn,
Demanded that her "trollish spouse" restore
Amera's virgin heart to her eterne,
Or she'd forever from his nuptial bed adjourn.

"In Elvenhame king Oberon was vexed,
And Queen Titania wept a tide of tears,
Magicians claimed perhaps the night was hexed.
In green Sylvania dryads and their peers
In grief all  blamed the moon, and stars, and years,
For every elf who weds a mortal dies,
And she herself will then immortal fears
Desert and in a maiden enterprise
Become a maid indeed from tears up to her eyes.

""There was a lordly row in Elvenhame.
The mountains shook in terror to their roots,
The clouds all slid on back from whence they came,
And ferns all rolled their fiddleheads to shoots.
Night blooming jessamines the moth salutes
Slipped into glooms and hid themselves in shades.
In mist wreathed fens all frogs and toads and newts
Crept into crevices, built barricades,
From foggy Arctic marshes to the Everglades.

"They flung fierce terms about that Indian Boy,
Hippolyta and Theseus and raised
More havoc than a Hatfield or McCoy:
The elven courtiers were sore amazed:
Their ears were singed and steamed and broiled and braised
By elf invective. Those two went so far
That crystalline air cracked, smoked, and hazed.
Our universe has not been so ajar
Since golden Rivendell lost Arwen Evenstar.

"She named king Oberon a brute in deed:
She claimed Puck caused mad havoc to occur:
Since queen Elizabeth it was decreed
The festal queen we crowned, all didst concur,
Remains a maid! No saucy mad jongleur
Should raucously ensnare her nimble soul.
Amera's groom has the whole realm astir!
We'll lose the Jewel of Fairy Land! He stole
Her fantastical heart away at our own May Pole!

"The point is that, my fine ethereal friends,
I've lost my wings and hitchhiked on a lamb!
I'm truant from the scouts Titania sends:
She's drafting troops. Thou'lt find me in a jam."
"Sharp Elf! I'll wager that thou scrapped to scram
And skip a rout, for thou wast ever one
To point keen jest in cryptic epigram.
They'll plaster thee! We'll have to close thee in a clam!"

"Friends, I was grounded in the general rage.
She's vehement, mercurial, a beast!
She fumes and flames, dost every sprite engage
And baseless blames all. Things seem, at the least,
Like all Hell's howling Furies are released.
She blames thee most because thou wast not there.
The truth that she dismissed thee from the East
Is lost:  her captious reason's fled since her May Feast.

"King Oberon, protesting innocence,
Does nothing but persuade her that he lies:
His tearful vows and pleas do but increase
Her wrath the more, and then she sees the eyes
Of sweet Amera and she hears her sighs,
And weeps to lose her, then is vexed again.
Perhaps the gods will send a soul more wise:
Magicians, sages, none can tell us then
Just if or how or this all may be resolved, or when."


                      Part Two


In Elvenhame no consolation came.
Amera wept and Queen Titania raged.
King Oberon refused to take the blame.
Grave Merlin and his ministers presaged
A civil war was seething to be waged.
With no sweet resolution to be found,
The elf Amera, artfully engaged,
In solemn rapture, quiet and profound,
Was absent from the choir who sang the dew time round.

Since fairies nurture all the darting crowds
Of swallows and bring on all summer rains,
Justice herself descended from the clouds,
More blind than Cupid, to take on the reigns
Of Fairy Land. She first all storm restrains.
They're called to stand before the court of Time
For they have wracked to ruin their own domains:
Whatever the vague origin of crime,
The crime's their discord in the fields of flowery thyme.

There's one green echoing dell in Fairy Land
Where, on occasion, elvish pantomime
Is held and coronations, bright and grand.
Here Justice has convened the court of Time.
The elves crept in in silence, for the crime
Was murder, murder by a single kiss;
And all adored the elf Amera's rhyme;
And no one wants her metamorphoses.
The king now takes the stand and all the Queen's elves hiss.

"A time ago, before the Indian Boy,
A girl, each tress the hue of apricocks,
Was shivering tears: an elf mused that some toy
Night trolls had cracked, or castles forged of blocks
Had toppled, so she penned her crimson flocks
Of ladybugs to see: she held she might
Bring aid (we elves are gods with toys)..... this shocks
Us still: the child's entire world was fright,
Like Christabella's world no chrism of delight

"Or triumph was allowed to bless her soul.
So, quivering in miseries, the child,
Whom no one thought to comfort or console,
Was raised in terror and in silence, wild.
Regimes were raised and plunged to hell, defiled,
And she forgotten with them: all her life,
Thereafter, in our care, the maid was styled
The Fairy Queen: despite harsh reigns of strife
Our England's Queen Elizabeth was never wife.

"Titania fears Amera's past our care.
Elizabeth our wondrous spouse had sent
Whole troops of scholars mystical and rare
To fill her bards with gilded dazzelment,
Harmonious charm and rhyme's magnificent
Creations to enchant and bless her realm,
That even now the mortals all lament
Her passing like the passing of the elm
Whose graceful shades the noon could never overwhelm.

"I vow to thee, I take the Fairy's Oath:
I swear upon my hallowed hazel wand
And all these emerald herbs in verdant growth
And all white waterlilies in this pond
All flowery coronels I've ever donned
That neither Puck nor I some mischief made,
In no act did we filch or vagabond
Or aid some mortal's rattling serenade,
Or urge Amera to desert the elven glade."

"Acquitted, Oberon! Go flit thee down".
There was a baleful thunderous report
That quaked the dell. "Now all ye mad elves DOWN!!!!!!!!
There wilt be ORDER in the fairy court!
Each raucous elf and riotous cohort
Is in contempt!" The judge was roundly hissed.
"The court rules that Don Puck didst not consort
In crime with Oberon, nor didst assist.
The grave case of the Queen against King Oberon's dismissed!

"There's been a crime and someone's yet to blame.
How has a mortal nicked Amera's heart
Around the May Pole here in Elvenhame?
Has no one sieved a single clue on this?
Thou! Tendriled in the purple clematis!"
"I'll take the stand myself and state my name:
I'm Mustardseed. I've been, in honored bliss,
Attendant fairy to the Queen: the same
That tended Bottom for Titania in her shame."

"Thou'rt known for sharpness: many note thy sting.
Some claim Puck urged the couple to elope.
What airy elven council canst thou bring:
The time thou hammocked in a cantelope
The fairy land had doubts that thou couldst cope."
"I'm sorry, councillor, I don't take the point.
Although I'm saucy I'm a seed of hope.
Thou knowest the whole world is out of joint:
Some manic mortal urged me melons to anoint."

"Point taken, Mustardseed! Sharp point indeed!
So it was in thy role as hopeful seed
That thou conveyed Puck's council and agreed
Those two should flee the fairy ball?" "Indeed,
That sweet hobgoblin Puck here had no need
To prank and messenger King Oberon's jests.
I blessed the both of them and pledged "Godspeed!""
"THOU  WHAT!??????????!!!!!!!!!" " I did as Cupid's law suggests:
They nestled snugly as two young robin redbreasts!

"My Sovereigns, My Sweet Honor, Gracious Elves,
To me beseems the matter has escaped
Us all: this council's not upon ourselves:
Our changeling minion fondling has escaped
Our care and as been neither lost nor raped,
Yet is condemned to die: that is her choice,
Yet death's a life away. We're jackanaped.
It's with us elves that she has found her voice.
Her deathless rhyme is ours so we must all rejoice.

"Our Guinivere must have her Launcelot,
And if we strive to own her then we'll kill
The very thing as elves that we exalt--
The soul of freedom and the liberty
To love our mother Earth and nurture life,
And serve the Lord as He created us."

"The court's adjourned for there has been no crime!"


                            Part Three


The cave the elf Amera haunts was bright
And merry with festivities, for all
Her mortal friends were bustling with delight.
Her Sabertooth, with a roared caterwahl,
Declared intents to view the waterfall
And gaze on all the gold-maeled fish deep in
Its lucent pool. Unheard his soft foot fall,
And off he then removed from all the din
Of festal rites of all her earthly kith and kin.

The dire wolf, with mournful auburn eyes,
And faithful gaze went loping from the cave,
On past the sylvan mermaid lake, that lies
In turquoise purity, where ondines lave
Their lithe and naked coolness, tresses wave-
Ing, swirling seaweed dreams. She sniffed the breeze
And turned to hunt for Battle Paw the Brave,
Who glides in verdurous jungles, tangled trees,......
There Saber snoozed in afternoon's sun dappled ease.

His quick ears flicked, his whiskers twitched awake.
He yawned, rolled, arc'd his back, and with a great
Long strong move stretched, and then he made a fake
Paw at a leaf, then flicked his claws, elate.
He purred in langour to luxuriate
In catnip clouded bliss, and then his eyes
All golden green he opened to his mate.
He cat kissed her, like lazy butterflies
Fan gradually rainbow wings sun beautifies.

The shaggy dire wolf's sad and honest face
Betrayed her worry, tears all freely ran.
"I fear for her. Though a bright elven ace
Who weaves enchanting rhymes more lovely than
The Lady of Shallott's, how ever can
She live with a drear mortal as her mate?"
"My lovely droop-eared dog! When love began
Betwixt ourselves, a vast cargo of hate
And doubt was heaped in hills on us: Eliminate

"This terroir for ethereal artistes!
Large Puppy Love! Thou loping, bounding dear,
We're wedded fast, and we two diverse beasts!
This needless whimpering and whining fear
Is baseless: she's a champion sonnetteer:
The elves, and God Himself is gazing down
To shield her from each raucous buccanneer.
There is no orc nor troll of ill renoun
Whose dismal ire can dim the luster of her crown."

"Yea, Saber Tooth, O Battle Paw, My Lion,
Thou freckled leopard, powerful indeed,
Yet by the constellation Orion,
We beasts are graced in wisdom: we're a breed
Diverse from human fools:" "I will concede
They're not sagacious beings: ask the owls:
Milleniums they've spied on each misdeed
That Man's perpetuated: how he fouls
The Earth and all Creation maims and disembowels....."

"Thou speakst of owls: Tonight whenas the moon
Is sailing heaven in her crystal ark,
I'll meet thee, near the shadowey lagoon,
For every wizened owlish matriarch
Has called Athena's council. By my bark,
It seems a havoc's swept all Fairy Land.
And all on our Amera, being the lark
Of Elvenhame. Some fay folk don't understand
How some mere mortal swain can come to grace her hand."

"Well, we wise beasts must nimbly aid them then".
Blue evening waned, the silver moon arose.
In dreams the great blue heron and the wren
Heard not the two bestir their dewey toes.
A fragrance: sweet gardenia, lily, rose,
And Saber, Trick See, owls' eyes and two
High elves, had, glowing, chosen to repose
On orchid thrones: "Too whoo... these are the twoooo"
"We ken our maiden dotes upon thee both" ..."Construe:

"The changeling thou has battled for is mine!"
"Nay, ours, Sweet Saber, Grant these elves one chance!"
Though Saber roared, he sphynxed down leonine.
"How can we aid her in this circumstance?
We two have lived one challenging romance:
Oh, we're espoused, thou thinkst perchance that we
As beasts live simply?" One shared glance
Betwixt them both met Queen Titania's plea:
"Wilt thou both pledge a sacred vow twixt me and thee?"

"I'll sniff for all they long for: buried clothes
And alabaster bones to gnaw on, bones
Amber as mammoth ivory, and those
Porphyry Skulls that mastiff baritones
Propound upon in mournful monotones.
I'll dredge dead ducks from reedy glacial lakes.
I'll sniff out all the possible unknowns.
I'll snuffle mould-ring newspapers from brakes,
All for the sizzling smells of rare porterhouse steaks."

"And I their Sabertooth will keep them warm.
I'll wrestle snakes and dragons from the wild
I'll guard them both in safety from the storm,
And scour their cavern rodent-undefiled,
And purr the tears from every weeping child...
And with this Battle Paw...." Titania glowed.
"Thou art a lion indeed, both brave and mild."
"Perhaps this wedding is a bliss bestowed!
Our blessings on thee!"  .......And then they inspired this ode.