A Song of Aryador

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Revision as of 19:51, 6 August 2019 by 174.216.17.186 (talk) (Added the Song of Aryador from 'Book of Lost Tales, Part 1'.)

A Song of Aryador is a poem written by J.R.R. Tolkien on September 12th, 1915. The poem bears upon the matter of the shadow-folk (referring to Elves) in Aryador (Gnomish: "land or place of shadow"). It was published in The Book of Lost Tales Part One.[1]


Text

In the vales of Aryador
By the wooded inland shore
Green the lakeward bends 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 hilles
And the upland slowly fills
With the shadow-folk that murmur in the fern;
And still there are the bells
And the voices in 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 had fared abroad
Through great forests unexplored
And the woods were the full of wandering beams of light.

Then were voices on the fells
And the 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.'

References