Another joined us as we rode
He was a Bard, or so he showed
With easy words and nimble wit,
Of which he claimed he never writ,
But made upon his saddle there
His horse and he made quite a pair.
In minstrelsy he did partake
His melodies flying as a drake;
Not quite so keen as a swan’s flight
But such analogies he would find trite.
He was a sharp balladeer
In songs to woo, he had no peer.
His frame was sturdy, complexion fair
Yet he never fixed his hair.
He did not believe in one convention
And instead wrote sonnets on the Ascension.
Describing the Lord in all his wonder,
He tore his listeners’ hearts asunder
Then picked up the fragments for his collection
And began on his new poetic confection.
A rosary swung down by his side
A bead for each child at his words that cried.
By Turin’s Holy Shroud he swore
In dreams, he slept at heaven’s door.
He spoke no language but his native tongue
Yet “Dum spero, spiro” he had always sung.
He did not enjoin in conversation
And gave no reason for his hesitation.
He listened to what the riders spoke,
But simply smiled, as if at a joke.
His face was slight, yet stern in cheek
It matched his complexion: ‘twas rather bleak.
He was born with the blood of nobility
But to his rank, held pure hostility.
He left his home with raw ambition
Though ‘twas naught but puerile sedition.
He kept some resin in his flowing sleeve
That he had won from a gambling reeve
The reeve believed he had lost naught
(He ruffed the reeve in playing ruff,
For above his ruff, he had some stuff.)
But the resin was just what the Bard sought
So it goes that one man’s folly
Can make another immensely jolly.
He carried about his trump’s reward
As if for it he truly labored.
Though he never used it for his bow
For his only bow was made for an arrow.
At nights he slept beneath the moon
Trying to learn its mirthful tune
He was a Cancer, a boy of sea,
Comfortable in eccentricity.
He studied stars as astrologers do,
But read his Bible, as apologists do.
In politics he did not partake
For that arena he did forsake
And left to his jests and jackal’s wit
Looking down as if into the lion’s pit
And he prayed for God to spare those Daniels
So dropped his words like subtle granules.
He drank with vigor and with glee
Though for what has escaped me.
And in glee he sang, with his brothers bass
And always with a less serious face.
In choirs he had sung for mighty kings
And kissed the highest of the courts’ rings.
He said their taste was awfully bitter
Though ne’er he said this sans a titter.
In one word, he was complex
He managed to both please, and vex.
