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And on shimmering oars leaves the blazing shores

In his argent-timbered bark. 32

Readings of the earliest version:

1–8 Eärendel sprang up from the Ocean’s cup

In the gloom of the mid-world’s rim;

From the door of Night as a ray of light

Leapt over the twilight brim,

And launching his bark like a silver spark

From the golden-fading sand

Down the sunlit breath of Day’s fiery Death

He sped from Westerland.

10 splendour] glory

11 wandered] went wandering

16 streaming] Evening

17 Unheeding] But unheeding

18 wayward] wandering

19 endless] magic darkling] darkening

20 O’er the margin] Toward the margent

22 And the dusk] To the dusk

25 The Ship] For the Ship

31 blazing] skiey

32 timbered] orbéd

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; 36

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. 40

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, 44

Tracking the Sun in his galleon

Through the pathless firmament,

Till his light grew old in abysses cold

And his eager flame was spent. 48

There seems every reason to think that this poem preceded all the outlines and notes given in this chapter, and that verbal similarities to the poem found in these are echoes (e.g. ‘his face is in silver flame’, outline C, p. 255; ‘the margent of the world’, outline E, p. 260).

In the fourth verse of the poem the Ship of the Moon comes forth from the Haven of the Sun; in the tale of The Hiding of Valinor (I.215) Aulë and Ulmo built two havens in the east, that of the Sun (which was ‘wide and golden’) and that of the Moon (which was ‘white, having gates of silver and of pearl’)—but they were both ‘within the same harbourage’. As in the poem, in the Tale of the Sun and Moon the Moon is urged on by ‘shimmering oars’ (I. 195).

II

The Bidding of the Minstrel

This poem, according to a note that my father scribbled on one of the copies, was written at St. John’s Street, Oxford (see I.27) in the winter of 1914; there is no other evidence for its date. In this case the earliest workings are extant, and on the back of one of the sheets is the outline account of Eärendel’s great voyage given on p. 261. The poem was then much longer than it became, but the workings are exceedingly rough; they have no title. To the earliest finished text a title was added hastily later: this apparently reads ‘The Minstrel renounces the song’. The title then became ‘The Lay of Eärendel’, changed in the latest text to ‘The Bidding of the Minstrel, from the Lay of Eärendel’.

33 Then] And

38 And the falling of] And hearkened to

46–8 And voyaging the skies

Till his splendour was shorn by the birth of Morn

And he died with the Dawn in his eyes.

There are four versions following the original rough draft, but the changes made in them were slight, and I give the poem here in the latest form, noting only that originally the minstrel seems to have responded to the ‘bidding’ much earlier—at line 5, which read ‘Then harken—a tale of immortal sea-yearning’; and that ‘Eldar’ in line 6 and ‘Elven’ in line 23 are emendations, made on the latest text, of ‘fairies’, ‘fairy’.

‘Sing us yet more of Eärendel the wandering,

Chant us a lay of his white-oared ship,

More marvellous-cunning than mortal man’s pondering,

Foamily musical out on the deep.

Sing us a tale of immortal sea-yearning 5

The Eldar once made ere the change of the light,

Weaving a winelike spell, and a burning

Wonder of spray and the odours of night;

Of murmurous gloamings out on far oceans;

Of his tossing at anchor off islets forlorn 10

To the unsleeping waves’ never-ending sea-motions;

Of bellying sails when a wind was born,

And the gurgling bubble of tropical water

Tinkled from under