“if i could fall into the sky / do you think time would pass me by / ’cause you know i’d walk”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday:

“Where now the horse and the rider?,” J.R.R. Tolkien

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?


From The Lord of the Rings, book three, chapter VI, given as Aragorn’s translation of an anonymous song of Rohan into Westron speech. The opening lines are inspired by a passage of the Old English poem “The Wanderer” (Tolkien based Rohirrim language and culture on the Anglo-Saxons). (Why yes, I did start rereading it November 6, why do you ask?)

---L.

Subject quote from A Thousand Miles, Vanessa Carlton.

Comments

[cmcmck]

I find myself translating it back into the OE! :o)