The Book of Lost Tales - J. R. Tolkien [185]
The river-sense was heavy in the lowland air.
There many willows changed the aspect of the earth and skies
Where feeding brooks wound in by sluggish ways,
And down the margin of the sailing Thames
Around his broad old bosom their old stems
Were bowed, and subtle shades lay on his streams
Where their grey leaves adroop o’er silver pools
Did knit a coverlet like shimmering jewels
Of blue and misty green and filtering gleams.
O agéd city of an all too brief sojourn,
I see thy clustered windows each one burn
With lamps and candles of departed men.
The misty stars thy crown, the night thy dress,
Most peerless-magical thou dost possess
My heart, and old days come to life again;
Old mornings dawn, or darkened evenings bring
The same old twilight noises from the town.
Thou hast the very core of longing and delight,
To thee my spirit dances oft in sleep
Along thy great grey streets, or down
A little lamplit alley-way at night—
Thinking no more of other cities it has known,
Forgetting for a while the tree-girt keep,
And town of dreams, where men no longer sing.
For thy heart knows, and thou shedst many tears
For all the sorrow of these evil years.
Thy thousand pinnacles and fretted spires
Are lit with echoes and the lambent fires
Of many companies of bells that ring
Rousing pale visions of majestic days
The windy years have strewn down distant ways;
And in thy halls still doth thy spirit sing
Songs of old memory amid thy present tears,
Or hope of days to come half-sad with many fears.
Lo! though along thy paths no laughter runs
While war untimely takes thy many sons,
No tide of evil can thy glory drown
Robed in sad majesty, the stars thy crown.
In addition, there are two texts in which a part of The City of Present Sorrow is treated as a separate entity. This begins with ‘O agéd city of an all too brief sojourn’, and is briefer: after the line ‘Thinking no more of other cities it has known’ it ends:
Forgetting for a while that all men weep
It strays there happy and to thee it sings
‘No tide of evil can thy glory drown,
Robed in sad majesty, the stars thy crown!’
This was first called The Sorrowful City, but the title was then changed to Wínsele wéste, windge reste réte berofene (Beowulf lines 2456–7, very slightly adapted: ‘the hall of feasting empty, the resting places swept by the wind, robbed of laughter’).
There are also two manuscripts in which The Town of Dreams is treated as a separate poem, with a subtitle An old town revisited; in one of these the primary title was later changed to The Town of Dead Days.
Lastly, there is a poem in two parts called The Song of Eriol. This is found in three manuscripts, the later ones incorporating minor changes made to the predecessor (but the third has only the second part of the poem).
The Song of Eriol
Eriol made a song in the Room of the Tale-fire telling how his feet were set to wandering, so that in the end he found the Lonely Isle and that fairest town Kortirion.
I
In unknown days my fathers’ sires
Came, and from son to son took root
Among the orchards and the river-meads
And the long grasses of the fragrant plain:
Many a summer saw they kindle yellow fires
Of flaglilies among the bowing reeds,
And many a sea of blossom turn to golden fruit
In walléd gardens of the great champain.
There daffodils among the ordered trees
Did nod in spring, and men laughed deep and long
Singing as they laboured happy lays
And lighting even with a drinking-song.
There sleep came easy for the drone of bees
Thronging about cottage gardens heaped with flowers;
In love of sunlit goodliness of days
There richly flowed their lives in settled hours—
But that was long ago,
And now no more they sing, nor reap, nor sow;
And I perforce in many a town about this isle
Unsettled wanderer have dwelt awhile.
2
Wars of great kings and clash of armouries,
Whose swords no man could tell, whose spears
Were numerous as a wheatfield’s ears,
Rolled over all the Great Lands; and the Seas
Were loud with navies; their devouring fires