The Gray Magician

I was living very merrily on Middle Earth As merry as a maid may be Till the Gray Magician came down along the road And flung his cobweb cloak on me: His cobweb cloak of gray brushed my eyes and my ears And all the curtained air was thinned, And I came to the sight of the quiet Other People Who live in the water and the wind: And I cannot go abroad to gather up the faggots, Singing to the honest air Because of the fingers of the brown wood-women Catching at my blowing hair: And I cannot sit at home and be quiet at my spinning, Singing to the thread I spin, Because of the crying of the green sea-women Beneath my sill to be let in: And I wish the Gray Magician had been swung to an oak Or drowned in the deep green sea Before he brushed my face with his cobweb cloak And stole the Middle Earth from me