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Beyond the sunny aisles and tree-propped halls;

For thin and clear and cold the note,

As strand of silver glass remote.

65

Then all thy trees, Kortirion, were bent,

And shook with sudden whispering lament:

For passing were the days, and doomed the nights

When flitting ghost-moths danced as satellites

Round tapers in the moveless air;

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And doomed already were the radiant dawns,

The fingered sunlight drawn across the lawns;

The odour and the slumbrous noise of meads,

Where all the sorrel, flowers, and pluméd weeds

Go down before the scyther’s share.

75

When cool October robed her dewy furze

In netted sheen of gold-shot gossamers,

Then the wide-umbraged elms began to fail;

Their mourning multitude of leaves grew pale,

Seeing afar the icy spears

80

Of Winter marching blue behind the sun

Of bright All-Hallows. Then their hour was done,

And wanly borne on wings of amber pale

They beat the wide airs of the fading vale,

And flew like birds across the misty meres.

III

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This is the season dearest to the heart,

And time most fitting to the ancient town,

With waning musics sweet that slow depart

Winding with echoed sadness faintly down

The paths of stranded mist. O gentle time,

90

When the late mornings are begemmed with rime,

And early shadows fold the distant woods!

The Elves go silent by, their shining hair

They cloak in twilight under secret hoods

Of grey, and filmy purple, and long bands

95

Of frosted starlight sewn by silver hands.

And oft they dance beneath the roofless sky,

When naked elms entwine in branching lace

The Seven Stars, and through the boughs the eye

Stares golden-beaming in the round moon’s face.

100

O holy Elves and fair immortal Folk,

You sing then ancient songs that once awoke

Under primeval stars before the Dawn;

You whirl then dancing with the eddying wind,

As once you danced upon the shimmering lawn

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In Elvenhome, before we were, before

You crossed wide seas unto this mortal shore.

Now are thy trees, old grey Kortirion,

Through pallid mists seen rising tall and wan,

Like vessels floating vague, and drifting far

110

Down opal seas beyond the shadowy bar

Of cloudy ports forlorn;

Leaving behind for ever havens loud,

Wherein their crews a while held feasting proud

And lordly ease, they now like windy ghosts

115

Are wafted by slow airs to windy coasts,

And glimmering sadly down the tide are borne.

Bare are thy trees become, Kortirion;

The rotted raiment from their bones is gone.

The seven candles of the Silver Wain,

120

Like lighted tapers in a darkened fane,

Now flare above the fallen year.

Though court and street now cold and empty lie,

And Elves dance seldom neath the barren sky,

Yet under the white moon there is a sound

125

Of buried music still beneath the ground.

When winter comes, I would meet winter here.

I would not seek the desert, or red palaces

Where reigns the sun, nor sail to magic isles,

Nor climb the hoary mountains’ stony terraces;

130

And tolling faintly over windy miles

To my heart calls no distant bell that rings

In crowded cities of the Earthly Kings.

For here is heartsease still, and deep content,

Though sadness haunt the Land of withered Elms

135

(Alalminórë in the Faery Realms);

And making music still in sweet lament

The Elves here holy and immortal dwell,

And on the stones and trees there lies a spell.

I give lastly the final poem, in the second of two slightly different versions; composed (as I believe) nearly half a century after the first.

The Trees of Kortirion

I

Alalminórë

O ancient city on a leaguered hill!

Old shadows linger in your broken gate,

Your stones are grey, your old halls now are still,

Your towers silent in the mist await

5

Their crumbling end, while through the storeyed elms

The River Gliding leaves these inland realms

And slips between long meadows to the Sea,