As but a fledgling Tolkien scholar [since I was 8 - so 27-ish years], I do love researching the old writings of The Man. More as an adult than as a child. He’s always there when I need o escape the crap in life…to dig deep into one of his tales.
I searched and scoured old smelly book stores for old copies of his work…I’ve collected a fair amount and noticed, of course, that I love Tolkien’s weaving of the written word…there are many quotes from his writings that I love, and even a few from The Man himself.
I’ve just purchased *Children of Hurin * and can not wait to delve in. It’s one of the texts of or relating to Tolkien I have not read.
‘Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.’
Too bad I’m at my dad’s, or I’d pull out my underlined and indexed copies of LoTR and put a zillion up here.
One that pops into my head at the moment is Treebeard’s lament to Pippin and Merry (googled because I can’t remember it all off the top of my head):
Of course, it is likely enough, my friends, that we are going to our doom: the last march of the Ents. But if we stayed at home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later. That thought has long been growing in our hearts; and that is why we are marching now. It was not a hasty resolve. Now at least the last march of the Ents may be worth a song. Aye, we may help the other peoples before we pass away. Still, I should have liked to see the songs come true about the Entwives. I should dearly have liked to see Fimbrethil again. But there, my friends, songs like trees bear fruit only in their own time and their own way: and sometimes they are withered untimely.*
From the mucking about I’ve done in the “other stuff,” this one, found late, gave me a thrill:
There was a merry passenger,
a messenger, a mariner:
he built a gilded gondola
to wander in, and had in her
a load of yellow oranges
and porridge for his provender;
he perfumed her with marjoram
and cardamom and lavender…
He tarried for a little while
in little isles that lonely lay,
and found there naught but blowing grass,
and so at last the only way
he took, and turned, and coming home
with honeycomb, to memory
his message came, and errand too!
In derring-do and glamoury
he had forgot them, journeying
and tourneying, a wanderer.
So now he must depart again
and start again his gondola,
for ever still a messenger,
a passenger, a tarrier,
a-roving as a feather does,
a weather-driven mariner.–Errantry
The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.
“Halfllings!” laughed the Rider that stood beside Eomer. “Halflings! But they are only a little people in old songs and children’s tales out of the North. Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight.”
“A man may do both,” said Aragorn. “For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time. The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!”
In highschool we had to memorize a poem of our choice, 14 lines or longer. I did Bilbo’s song from The Prancing Pony. I wanted to do Strider’s tale of Beren and Tinuviel but Bilbo’s song was lighter.
Cyn, Tolkien geek lite compared to some