:: of words of gold ::

I used to get really irritated when I was reading a book and the characters would quote something and it would

                                                                                   appear

italicized, centered -- like these lines are here.

it drove me nuts. usually I didn't know what the quotation was even from, so it made me feel dumb on top of that. 

   my annoyance with inserted poetry changed when I read lord of the rings. (maybe I should say I found an exception to the rule.) I fell in love with tolkien's poetry; it's so wonderful I sometimes flip through the book just reading the songs, and, hokey though it may be, I really do enjoy the musical because THEY QUOTE THE BOOK and I can't resist it when people do their research.

   um, I didn't mean to quote lbd again. sorry.

today I want to just wallow in amazing meter and beautiful words for a little while; though there's so much poetry here that "today" is about to mean "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," which I trust will not creep in its petty pace from day to day, since this is poetry we're discussing.
   ah, the joys of participation! 

read it. seriously. 

- - -

some of the only poetry I've discovered that I can just slip into is what tolkien included in lord of the rings. you don't have to be in the 'right mood', you can just start reading. his words are like music; further, he conveys the idea of a tune without it. take the elvish songs: they are delicate, clear, otherworldly, but they are only in verse. the tune you feel? it's just words. 

O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!

We still remember, we who dwell

   in this far land beneath the trees,

Thy starlight on the Western Seas.

the marching songs ("we must away! we must away! we ride before the break of day!") and the nonsense songs ("O! water hot is a noble thing!") and the sweet pondering songs ("and whither then? I cannot say") all add to the feel of the moment. perhaps it's tolkien's constant use of contrast that makes his LOTR poetry so moving: open and closed, hot and cold, dark and light. 

O! Wanderers in the shadowed land,

despair not! For though dark they stand, 

all woods there be must end at last,

and see the open sun go past....

but then again, he has nonsense verses quite devoid of meaning, and they're great. I do sometimes wonder if (for example) the bombadil chapters were just for the poetry. because honestly, do those two/three chapters add much to the story but amazingly-metered verse? mmmno.

   speaking of amazing meter, though: the martial, strong-beat verses are fantastic, stirring and exciting (think of the "do you hear the people sing" drumbeat). ...but somehow they're always bittersweet. 

Gil-galad was an Elven-king.

Of him the harpers sadly sing:

the last whose realm was fair and free

between the Mountains and the Sea.

His sword was long, his lance was keen,

his shining helm afar was seen;

the countless stars of heaven's field

were mirrored in his silver shield.

But long ago he rode away,

and where he dwelleth none can say;

for into darkness fell his star

in Mordor where the shadows are.

many of the poems in the series are sad -- "as are all the tales of middle-earth" -- but they are all the more beautiful for that sadness; his mini-epic poems are breathtaking.

Long was the way that fate them bore,

O'er stony mountains cold and grey,

Through walls of iron and darkling door,

And woods of nightshade morrowless.

The Sundering Seas between them lay,

And yet at last they met once more,

And long ago they passed away

In the forest singing sorrowless.

the tale of beren and tinúviel is one of my favorites; but also the "flammifer of westernesse". there's just a wildness about it -- flowing lines, the alliteration -- that I love. 

    one thing that strikes me about tolkien's poetry is his ability to capture a sweetness and a sadness: almost melancholy, a nostalgia, perhaps, which transforms ordinary, relatable things into something slightly elevated and slightly magical -- and we go right along with it. we live that journey with the fellowship, and feel all the more noble and courageous for it! and it becomes so much harder to let go when the time comes.

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 will see a world

that I shall never know.

the use of language to convey an atmosphere is an ability all great poets have. dare I say it's one that distinguishes the great from the mediocre? compare the words and cadence of the elf-songs to the dwarf-chants. the heavy echo of the words are like the stones the dwarves themselves hewed. 

The world is grey, the mountains old,

The forge's fire is ashen-cold;

No harp is wrung, no hammer falls:

The darkness dwells in Durin's halls;

The shadow lies upon his tomb

In Moria, in Khazad-dûm.

...versus:

When dawn came dim the land was lost,

The mountains sinking grey

Beyond the heaving waves that tossed

Their plumes of blinding spray.

there are a few smatterings of verse that I've left out, but this has been almost all of the poems in book one. the last one (that's not in elvish) is galadriel's song as the fellowship is preparing to leave lothlorien. the musical's song "wonder" draws quite a few lines from the book, and mostly from this song. both are beautiful.

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?