Song of the Entwives, by J.R.R. Tolkien

Since finishing The Hobbit, I’ve been re-reading The Lord of the Rings. I finished Fellowship a month or so ago, and am now well into The Two Towers. It’s a lovely, enlightening read. It’s been at least a decade since I’ve read this book — most of my Tolkien-reading being spent among The Silmarillion and its spinoff tomes — and there’s so much that I’d forgotten. Like, for instance, how achingly slow the first two thirds of Fellowship is. If you love hobbit lore and fictional geography (and fortunately I do), then it remains interesting, but Tolkien takes an awful lot of time to get things moving. Part of this is because, I think, he wrote the trilogy after fans wrote to him asking for “more about hobbits,” and he started by giving them just that: every little detail about hobbits that he could come up with. I do sympathize with readers who quit after the first 100-150 pages of not much happening. The hobbits are very passive creatures. It makes sense for them to journey so leisurely, but it can be a hard read for the impatient among us. Fortunately, once the Fellowship leave Rivendell, the pace quickens, and we suddenly find ourselves amidst a genuinely exciting adventure.

Anyway, this is all just a lead in to share Treebeard’s song about the Entwives. If I hadn’t known that it would happen, I would’ve been surprised; Treebeard seems an awfully unlikely creature to sing a heart-tugging love song. And yet, here it is. A song about creatures we’ve never seen and can hardly imagine, and characters we’ve never met (but for one and only recently), which has little bearing on the plot before or after or any story significance beyond itself, and yet it breaks our hearts.

Treebeard sings about the Entwives to Merry and Pippin

Ent:

When Spring unfolds the beechen leaf, and sap is in the bough;

When light is on the wild-wood stream, and wind is on the brow;

When stride is long, and breath is deep, and keen the mountain-air,

Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is fair!

Entwife:

When Spring is come to garth and field, and corn is in the blade;

When blossom like a shining snow is on the orchard ladi;

When shower and Sun upon the Earth with fragrance fill the air,

I’ll linger here, and will not come, because my land is fair.

Ent:

When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold

Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of trees unfold;

When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the West,

Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is best!

Entwife:

When Summer warms the hanging fruit and burns the berry brown;

When Straw is gold, and ear is white, and harvest comes to town;

When honey spills, and apple swells, though wind be in the West,

I’ll linger here beneath the Sun, because my land is best!

Ent:

When Winter comes, the winter wild that hill and wood shall slay;

When trees shall fall and starless night devour the sunless day;

When wind is in the deadly East, then in the bitter rain

I’ll look for thee, and call to thee; I’ll come to thee again!

Entwife:

When Winter comes, and singing ends; when darkness falls at last;

When broken is the barren bough, and light and labour past;

I’ll look for thee, and wait for thee, until we meet again:

Together we will take the road beneath the bitter rain!

Both:

Together we will take the road that leads into the West,

And far away will find a land where both our hearts may rest.

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“A Christmas Legend” by Frank Sidgwick

At the Dickens Fair  this year, I saw this poem performed with a brilliance that brought its every image and emotion to life. Reading the text by itself cannot, of course, deliver the same experience, but nonetheless it is a joy to read. I know nothing of this Frank Sidgwick, but his poem sounds like something Lewis might have written, or at least approved of.

[UPDATE: Mark Lewis, the performer I saw, has kindly provided a link to his recording of the poem. Listen to it here.]

It is about what happens when the wild Greek god Pan encounters the Christ Child on the first Christmas. I suspect, but am not sure, that it may allude to the reported death of Pan, which legendarily occurs at the time of Jesus’ birth. Yet apart from this bit of legend, the poem still has power. When a created being, however mysterious and magnificent, meets its Creator, what can it do, but weep? Tears of joy or of fear, or of both mingled with the latter triumphant.

Frank Sidgwick

A Christmas Legend

Abroad on a winter’s night there ran
Under the starlight, leaping the rills
Swollen with snow-drip from the hills,
Goat-legged, goat-bearded Pan.

He loved to run on the crisp white floor,
Where black hill-torrents chiselled grooves,
And he loved to print his clean-cut hooves,
Where none had trod before.

And now he slacked and came to a stand
Beside a river too broad to leap;
And as he panted he heard a sheep
That bleated near at hand.

“Bell-wether, bell-wether, what do you say?
Peace, and huddle your ewes from cold!”
“Master, but ere we went to fold
Our herdsman hastened away:

“Over the hill came other twain
And pointed away to Bethlehem,
And spake with him, and he followed them,
And has not come again.

“He dropped his pipe of the river-reed ;
He left his scrip in his haste to go ;
And all our grazing is under snow,
So that we cannot feed.”

“Left his sheep on a winter’s night?”
Pan folded them with an angry frown.
“Bell-wether, bell-wether, I’ll go down
Where the star shines bright.”

Down by the hamlet he met the man.
“Shepherd, no shepherd, thy flock is lorn!”
“Master, no master, a child is born
Royal, greater than Pan.

“Lo, I have seen ; I go to my sheep ;
Follow my footsteps through the snow,
But warily, warily see thou go,
For child and mother sleep.”

Into the stable-yard Pan crept,
And there in a manger a baby lay
Beside his mother upon the hay,
And mother and baby slept.

Pan bent over the sleeping child,
Gazed on him, panting after his run :
And while he wondered, the little one
Opened his eyes and smiled;

Smiled, and after a little space
Struggled an arm from the swaddling-band,
And raising a tiny dimpled hand,
Patted the bearded face.

Something snapped in the breast of Pan;
His heart, his throat, his eyes were sore,
And he wished to weep as never before
Since the world began.

And out he went to the silly sheep,
To the fox on the hill, the fish in the sea,
The horse in the stall, the bird in the tree,
Asking them how to weep.

They could not teach they did not know;
The law stands writ for the beast that’s dumb
That a limb may ache and a heart be numb,
But never a tear can flow.

So bear you kindly to-day, O Man,
To all that is dumb and all that is wild,
For the sake of the Christmas Babe who smiled
In the eyes of great god Pan.

“A Song of Aryador” by J.R.R. Tolkien

The recent dearth of posts is not what I had planned for this month, but is caused by intensive training for my new job. The review for Series 3 of Doctor Who is in the works (as it should have been long ago), and I am happily taking notes on Series 4 now. I am also continuing through George MacDonald’s Lilith, and am finding it as fascinating and perplexing as was Phantastes. And in the realm of webcomics, I have been reading through the famed Gunnerkrigg Court, a story about an intelligent English girl at a very strange boarding school surrounded by the shadows of fairy tales and myths (and a little sci-fi). But as you wait for more news on those fronts, I’d like to present an especially beautiful poem by the Professor, and one even less well known than his others.

It is found only in The Book of Lost Tales 1, at the end of the section entitled “The Coming of the Elves.” Christopher Tolkien tells us that it was written in an army camp in Lichenfield on September 12, 1915. It appears to be a song of an ancient group of men about the Lost Elves (those who had not gone to Valinor), whom they feared.

A Song of Aryador

J.R.R. Tolkien

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 downward from the pines?
Do you hear the blue woods moan
When the Sun has gone alone
To hunt the mountain-shadows in the pines?

She is lost among the hills
And the upland slowly fills
With the shadow-folk that murmur in the fern;
And still there are the bells
And the voices on the fells
While Eastward a few stars begin to burn.

Men are kindling tiny gleams
Far below by mountain-streams
Where they dwell among the beechwoods near the shore,
But the great woods on the height
Watch the waning western light
And whisper to the wind of things of yore,

When the valley was unknown,
And the waters roared alone,
And the shadow-folk danced downward all the night,
When the Sun fared abroad
Through great forests unexplored
And the woods were full of wandering beams of light.

Then were voices in the fells
And a sound of ghostly bells
And a march of shadow-people o’er the height.
In the mountains by the shore
In forgotten Aryador
There was dancing and was ringing;
There were shadow-people singing
Ancient songs of olden gods in Aryador.’

Chesterton’s “Chord of Colour”

Capital hat, good man!

Ah, Chesterton, witty Christian sage! Here he expounds again on his favorite subject: how the unspiritual man blinds himself to the magnificent glories of God’s creation. In this poem, we appear to have a narrator utterly besotted with his Lady fair; and yet not so besotted as to worship her at the exclusion of the God who created her. On the contrary, the splendor of the Lady’s beauty calls his attention to all the other splendors God has made. The Lady wears gray, he exults in gray spires, gray morning skies, and the gray hairs that mark the wisdom and honor of old age. She wears green, and every grass and tree seems to shine like an emerald. She wears blue, and he is awed and grateful at the Creator’s artistry in using that same color for the sky.

My friends, I have only just discovered this poem, but it grows increasingly beautiful to me as I reflect on it. What Chesterton has given us is a picture of how the romantic love between a godly man and woman will of its own accord, and quite naturally, magnify their own love for God. And since their love for each other comes from God Himself, well, you see what a wonderful, eternal cycle this is.

And yet this cycle of love, joy, and beauty, is not enjoyed by all. The “evil sage” at the end—I guess that Chesterton is hinting at scholars and intelligentsia who care not to think of God—looks at the world, and sees only a bubble, not even then noting the colorful beauty of bubbles themselves!

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

A Chord of Colour

My Lady clad herself in grey,
That caught and clung about her throat;
Then all the long grey winter day
On me a living splendour smote;
And why grey palmers holy are,
And why grey minsters great in story,
And grey skies ring the morning star,
And grey hairs are a crown of glory.

My Lady clad herself in green,
Like meadows where the wind-waves pass;
Then round my spirit spread, I ween,
A splendour of forgotten grass.
Then all that dropped of stem or sod,
Hoarded as emeralds might be,
I bowed to every bush, and trod
Amid the live grass fearfully.

My Lady clad herself in blue,
Then on me, like the seer long gone,
The likeness of a sapphire grew,
The throne of him that sat thereon.
Then knew I why the Fashioner
Splashed reckless blue on sky and sea;
And ere ’twas good enough for her,
He tried it on Eternity.

Beneath the gnarled old Knowledge-tree
Sat, like an owl, the evil sage:
‘The World’s a bubble,’ solemnly
He read, and turned a second page.
‘A bubble, then, old crow,’ I cried,
‘God keep you in your weary wit!
‘A bubble–have you ever spied
‘The colours I have seen on it?’

Source: The Wild Knight and Other Poems by G.K. Chesterton, courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

Treasure Our Young Folks and Nurture Their Minds

Well, my copy is green, at least. I like the drawing of the ship.

At some point last year, on the shelf at my library where they sell unwanted books cheaply, I spent $1.50 for a green leather-bound Volume One of The Young Folks Treasury published in 1919 by The University Society. It is in wonderfully good condition, with a cover as smooth as the day it was printed and but a little worn at the corners. One page out of 538 is torn, and the black and white illustrations are still charming and clear. I could not believe my good fortune, and indeed was somewhat angered at how the library had set it out where any child or careless adult could grab and abuse it. This tome has survived ninety-two years with admirable hardiness for the purpose of mankind’s enrichment, and it deserves to be treated with respect.

Making it more special to me is that this volume—one of a series of twelve, it claims—is devoted to fairy tales, fables, and poetry. Designed to be read by parents to their children, the book collects all the most famous and beloved nursery rhymes, nursery tales, childhood poems, simplified fairy tales, older poetry, fables (Aesop’s and East Indian’s), and a wonderful assortment of folk tales from around the world. If for nothing else, the book has use as a capsule of the stories children were told in the early part of the 20^th century.

I was also impressed by the introduction written by Hamilton W. Mabie. In this era of transition into digital media and eBooks, and the threat of replacement of literature by movies, video games, and possibly even bloggers, I think it is important to keep his words close in mind. As an uncle of three kids with boundless energy, I see their potential and yet worry that our culture does not nurture them well. Children need to be trained to focus, to concentrate, and it is not good to feed them constant sensory distractions of many kinds all at once from the day they are born. But sitting down with a book in your hands and reading, whether for fifteen minutes or an hour or three hours, demands that the reader gather his mental faculties together and think. Engage. Converse with the author. Be patient. What are we doing to ourselves when we leave physical books to lie unopened and spend uncounted hours staring at the lights of our computer screens and television sets? What are we doing to our children if they are raised this way, knowing naught else, and what of our future?

Books are as much a part of the furnishing of a house as tables and chairs, and in the making of a home they belong, not with the luxuries but with the necessities.  A bookless house is not a home; for a home affords food and shelter for the mind as well as for the body.  It is as great an offence against a child to starve his mind as to starve his body, and there is as much danger of reducing his vitality and putting him at a disadvantage in his lifework in the one as in the other form of deprivation…

Children are helpless to protect themselves and secure what they need for healthy of body and mind; they are exceedingly impressionable; and the future is always in their hands.  The first and most imperative duty of parents is to give their children the best attainable preparation for life, no matter at what sacrifice to themselves…

These twelve volumes aim, in brief to make the home the most inspiring school and the most attractive place for pleasure, and to bring the best the world has to offer of adventure, heroism, achievement and beauty within its four walls…

No apology is offered for giving large space to myths, legends, fairy stories, tales of all sorts, and to poetry; for in these expressions of the creative mind is to be found the material on which the imagination has fed in every age and which is, for the most part, conspicuously absent from our educational programmes.

America has at present greater facility in producing “smart” men than in producing able men; the alert, quick-witted, money-maker abounds, but the men who live with ideas, who care for the principles of things, and who make life rich in resource and interest are comparatively few.  America needs poetry more than it needs industrial training; though the two ought never to be separated.  The time to awaken the imagination, which is the creative faculty, is early childhood; and the most accessible material for this education is the literature which the race created in its childhood.  The creative man, whether in the arts or in practical affairs, in poetry, in engineering or in business, is always the man of imagination.

– Hamilton W. Mabie, “General Introduction” to The Young Folks Treasury

The entirety of this volume can be read online at The Project Gutenberg, while Volume X on “Ideal Home Life” can be found here.

“The Last Voyage of Eärendel” by J.R.R. Tolkien

Eärendil the Mariner, by Ted Nasmith

This is the first poem written by Tolkien about the character of Eärendil, the famous voyager who in Middle-Earth mythology carried the morning star on his brow across the sky. Interestingly enough, the character’s name comes from the Anglo-Saxon word Éarendel, a name associated with the star Rigel in Orion, which is a wandering star and the brightest of that constellation. Subsequently, it is an extremely important star for navigation, and makes a fitting inspiration for the name of Tolkien’s great seafaring man. But even apart from these associations the poem is immensely beautiful, a wonderful example of mythopoeia.

The Last Voyage of Eärendel

J.R.R. Tolkien

Eärendel arose where the shadow flows
At Ocean’s silent brim;
Through the mouth of night as a ray of light
Where the shores are sheer and dim
He launched his bark like a silver spark
From the last and lonely sand;
Then on sunlit breath of the day’s fiery death
He sailed from Westerland.

He threaded his path o’er the aftermath
Of the splendour of the Sun,
And wandered far past many a star
In his gleaming galleon.
On the gathering tide of darkness ride
The argosies of the sky,
And spangle the night with their sails of light
As the streaming star goes by.

Unheeding he dips past these twinkling ships,
By his wayward spirit whirled
On an endless quest through the darkling West
O’er the margin of the world;
And he fares in haste o’er the jewelled waste
And the dusk from whence he came
With his heart afire with bright desire
And his face in silver flame.

The Ship of the Moon from the East comes soon
From the Haven of the Sun,
Whose white gates gleam in the coming beam
Of the mighty silver one.
Lo! with bellying clouds as his vessel’s shrouds
He weighs anchor down the dark,
And on shimmering oars leaves the blazing shores
In his argent-timbered bark.

Then Éarendel fled from that Shipman dread
Beyond the dark earth’s pale,
Back under the rim of the Ocean dim,
And behind the world set sail;
And he heard the mirth of the folk of earth
And the falling of their tears,
As the world dropped back in a cloudy wrack
On its journey down the years.

Then he glimmering passed to the starless vast
As an isléd lamp at sea,
And beyond the ken of mortal men
Set his lonely errantry,
Tracking the Sun in his galleon
Through the pathless firmament,
Till his light grew old in abysses cold
And his eager flame was spent.

The Book of Lost Tales 2, pages 271-3

"On an endless quest through the darkling West..."

A rather silly verse. Pay it no attention.

Colors of a mel-
-ancholic hue diffuséd
are with this haiku.