What is your favourite poem/song by Tolkien?

[Beren3000]

Wow! Great quote, Lenya. I have GOT to buy the Lays of Beleriand some time!

[Lenya]

You have got to buy it now! It is really a stunning book to add to a Tolkien collection, if you like collecting books. ( I love it! ) By the way, Lay of Lethian is part of the history of ME vol III , The Lays of Beleriand. It is a must have.

[Pytt]

wow! I'm stunned. when do you find all of this magnificent poetry? Lays of Beleriand?

[Lenya]

Most of it, yes. Lays of Lethian. I think it is the crown of Tolkien's works.

[Pytt]

Alright! know what to whis for Xmas

[Lenya]

Good wish. I had to buy mine with my own money.

[Telcontar_Dunedain]

In my nearest book store they said I could get all 12 of the HoME books for £150. So I decided to get people to buy them for me for Christmas!

[Lenya]

That's so cool. No book store had the book, so I had to order it over internet. I have only ever seen 4 volumes in any bookstore.

[Elemmírë]

Originally Posted by Telcontar_Dunedain

In my nearest book store they said I could get all 12 of the HoME books for £150. So I decided to get people to buy them for me for Christmas!

A very nice idea...

My favourite poem... something from the Lays. Parts VI & VII of the Lay of Leithian, I suppose. It's something of a... love/hate relationship...

[Valandil]

I always liked this one from 'The Ring goes South':

I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen,
Of meadow-flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were,
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
Of how the world will be
When winter comes without a spring
That I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things
That I have never seen:
In every wood in every spring
There is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
Of people long ago,
And people who shall see a world
That I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
Of times that were before,
I listen for returning feet
And voices at the door.

[Lenya]

That is a sad poem. Especially: And people who shall see a world
That I shall never know.

[Elemmírë]

I like sad poems. That was very nice, Valandil. I always liked the last version of the Walking Song (enough to put it in my senior quote last year ):

Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate;
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

And I think I like all of Galadriel's songs and poems, especially the ones about Valinor (go figure ):

I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew:
Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew,
Beyond the Sun, beyond the Moon, the foam was on the Sea,
And by the strand of Ilmarin there grew a golden Tree.
Beneath the stars of Ever-eve in Eldamar it shone,
In Eldamar beside the walls of Elven Tirion.
There long the golden leaves have grown upon the branching years,
While here beyond the Sundering Seas now fall the Elven-tears.
O Lórien! The Winter comes, the bare and leafless Day;
The leaves are falling in the stream, the River flows away.
O Lórien! Too long I have dwelt upon this Hither Shore
And in a fading crown have twined the golden elanor.
But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me,
What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?


Hey... how can anyone who truly loves Elves for what they are, rather than just their beauty not love sad songs?

[Valandil]

Originally Posted by Elemmire

I like sad poems. That was very nice, Valandil...

Tolkien does 'sad' very well - does he not?

[Lenya]

Here's another stunning quote:
(Lay of the Children of Hurin p.47 ln. 1301 - 1304)

Then winds were wakened in wild dungeons
where thrumming thunders throbbed and rumbled;
storm came striding with streaming banners
from the four corners of the fainting world;

can't you just see it comming?

[Elemmírë]

Yes.

This one is from memory, so sorry if I've got part of it wrong...

He chanted a song of wizardry
Of piercing, opening, of treachery
Revealing, uncovering, betraying
Then sudden Felagund there swaying
Sang in answer a song of staying
Resisting, battling against power
Of secrets kept, strength like a tower
And trust unbroken, freedom, escape
Of changing and of shifting shape
Of snares eluded, broken traps
The prison opening, the chain that snaps
Backwards and forwards swayed their song
Reeling and foundering as ever more strong
The chanting swelled, Felagund fought
And all the magic and might he brought
Of Elvenesse into his words
Softly in the gloom they heard the birds
Singing afar in Nargothrond
The sighing of the sea beyond
Beyond the Western World on sand
On sand of pearls in Elvenland
The gloom gathered, darkness growing
In Valinor, the red blood flowing
Beside the sea where the Noldor slew
The Foamriders and stealing drew
Their white ships with their white sails
From lamplit havens, the wind wails
The wolf howls, the ravens flee
The ice mutters in the mouth of the sea
The captives sad in Angband mourn
Thunder rumbles and fires burn
A vast smoke gushes out - a roar
And Felagund swoons upon the floor

In the Silmarillion, the last two lines are replaced by "And Finrod fell before the throne," but I liked the Lays of Beleriand version better, even though I don't think I've memorised it completely right yet...

I wonder why I would have chosen a poem like that...

[Beor]

One of my favorite poems of JRR Tolkiens in his whole Middle-earth thingy is the one in BOLT1, I think, about Aryador, I have no idea what the words are, and all my books are currently headed across the atlantic ocean (whoop whoop) in an effort to get to America from Deutschland, so I cant write it here. But I do know that the beat or whatever is something like the verses of "takin care of business" by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, *ahem*,

You get up every morning
from alarm clocks warning
take the eight fifteen into the city
theres a whistle up above and
people pushin', people shovin'
and the girls, theyre tryin to look pretty

[Rían]

I love that one, Elemmire! I wrote part of it out in Tengwar.

Beor - how funny! You're absolutely right, it has that beat! Here's a bit from it :

A Song of Aryador

In the vales of Aryador
By the wooded inland shore
Green the lakeward bents and meads
Sloping down to murmurous reeds
That whisper in the dusk o'er Aryador:

'Do you hear the many bells
Of the goats upon the fells
Where the valley tumbles downwards from the pines?
Do you hear the blue woods moan
When the Sun has gone alone
To hunt the mountain-shadows in the pines?'

[Elemmírë]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

I love that one, Elemmire! I wrote part of it out in Tengwar.

I... um... tried translating it into Quenya... But I quit a couple lines into it since a lot of those words were hard to find...

Of course, I wrote Galadriel's "Ai, laurie lassi lantar surinen..." out in Tengwar at least once...

[Blackheart]

Originally Posted by Valandil

Tolkien does 'sad' very well - does he not?

Probably all that time sitting in muddy WWI trenches during xmass...


I must vote for the bombadil stuff in the reader...

There's lots of sadness in the world, but wonder and happiness are rare jewels...

[Beor]

Most of his stuff doesnt really come off as sad, though, it seems to me more like longing, or a fond memory of something lost. Sad, but with happy roots. His stuff usually cheers me up pretty well.

I also really dig the one about the Man in the Moon in Fellowship of the Ring and in The Tolkien Reader, or something, I could be wrong, it is within the adventures of Tom B. Its fun.