The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 - J. R. R. Tolkien [34]
Lo, Manwë Súlimo clad in sapphires, ruler of the airs and wind, is held lord of Gods and Elves and Men, and the greatest bulwark against the evil of Melko.’11
Then said Rúmil again:
‘Lo! After the departure of these Ainur and their vassalage all was quiet for a great age while Ilúvatar watched. Then on a sudden he said: “Behold I love the world, and it is a hall of play for Eldar and Men who are my beloved. But when the Eldar come they will be the fairest and the most lovely of all things by far; and deeper in the knowledge of beauty, and happier than Men. But to Men I will give a new gift, and a greater.” Therefore he devised that Men should have a free virtue whereby within the limits of the powers and substances and chances of the world they might fashion and design their life beyond even the original Music of the Ainur that is as fate to all things else. This he did that of their operations everything should in shape and deed be completed, and the world fulfilled unto the last and smallest.12 Lo! Even we Eldar have found to our sorrow that Men have a strange power for good or ill and for turning things despite Gods and Fairies to their mood in the world; so that we say: “Fate may not conquer the Children of Men, but yet are they strangely blind, whereas their joy should be great.”
Now Ilúvatar knew that Men set amid the turmoils of the Ainur would not be ever of a mind to use that gift in harmony with his intent, but thereto he said: “These too in their time shall find that all they have done, even the ugliest of deeds or works, redounds at the end only to my glory, and is tributary to the beauty of my world.” Yet the Ainur say that the thought of Men is at times a grief even to Ilúvatar; wherefore if the giving of that gift of freedom was their envy and amazement, the patience of Ilúvatar at its misuse is a matter of the greatest marvelling to both Gods and Fairies. It is however of one with this gift of power that the Children of Men dwell only a short time in the world alive, yet do not perish utterly for ever, whereas the Eldar dwell till the Great End13 unless they be slain or waste in grief (for to both of these deaths are they subject), nor doth eld subdue their strength, except it may be in ten thousand centuries; and dying they are reborn in their children, so that their number minishes not, nor grows. Yet while the Sons of Men will after the passing of things of a certainty join in the Second Music of the Ainur, what Ilúvatar has devised for the Eldar beyond the world’s end he has not revealed even to the Valar, and Melko has not discovered it.’
NOTES
1 This opening sentence is lacking in the draft.
2 The reference to the setting of the Secret Fire within the Ainur is lacking in the draft.
3 This passage, from ‘Now Melko had among the Ainur…’, is developed from one much briefer in the draft: ‘Melko had among the Ainu fared most often alone into the dark places and the voids [added afterwards: seeking the secret fires].’
4 The words ‘my song’ and ‘my thought’ were in the text as written in reversed positions, and were emended afterwards in pencil to the reading given. At the beginning of the text occurs the phrase: ‘Before all things he sang into being the Ainur first.’ Cf. the opening of the Ainulindalë in The Silmarillion: ‘The Ainur…that were the offspring of his thought.’
5 There is no reference here in the draft to Manwë or Aulë.
6 This sentence concerning the friendship and alliance of Manwë and Ulmo is lacking in the draft.
7 This passage was quite different in the draft text:
And even as Ilu was speaking to Ulmo the Ainu beheld how the great history which Ilu had propounded to them to their amazement and whereto all his glory was but the hall of its enactment—how it was unfolding in myriad complexities even as had been the music they played about the feet of Ilu, how beauty was whelmed in uproar and tumult and again