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And its lamp is blown

to a flame of flickering blue.

He pipes not to me,

He pipes not to thee,

He whistles for none of you.

His music is his own,

The tunes of Tinfang Warble!

In the earliest version Tinfang is called a ‘leprawn’, and in the early glossary of the Gnomish speech he is a ‘fay’.

The second poem is entitled Over Old Hills and Far Away. This exists in five texts, of which the earliest bears an Old English title as well (of the same meaning): eond fyrne beorgas heonan feor. Notes by my father state that it was written at Brocton Camp in Staffordshire between December 1915 and February 1916, and rewritten at Oxford in 1927. The final version given here differs in many details of wording and in places whole lines from earlier versions, from which I note at the end a few interesting readings.

Over Old Hills and Far Away

It was early and still in the night of June,

And few were the stars, and far was the moon,

The drowsy trees drooping, and silently creeping

Shadows woke under them while they were sleeping.

5

I stole to the window with stealthy tread

Leaving my white and unpressed bed;

And something alluring, aloof and queer,

Like perfume of flowers from the shores of the mere

That in Elvenhome lies, and in starlit rains

10

Twinkles and flashes, came up to the panes

Of my high lattice-window. Or was it a sound?

I listened and marvelled with eyes on the ground.

For there came from afar a filtered note

Enchanting sweet, now clear, now remote,

15

As clear as a star in a pool by the reeds,

As faint as the glimmer of dew on the weeds.

Then I left the window and followed the call

Down the creaking stairs and across the hall

Out through a door that swung tall and grey,

20

And over the lawn, and away, away!

It was Tinfang Warble that was dancing there,

Fluting and tossing his old white hair,

Till it sparkled like frost in a winter moon;

And the stars were about him, and blinked to his tune

25

Shimmering blue like sparks in a haze,

As always they shimmer and shake when he plays.

My feet only made there the ghost of a sound

On the shining white pebbles that ringed him round,

Where his little feet flashed on a circle of sand,

30

And the fingers were white on his flickering hand.

In the wink of a star he had leapt in the air

With his fluttering cap and his glistening hair;

And had cast his long flute right over his back,

Where it hung by a ribbon of silver and black.

35

His slim little body went fine as a shade,

And he slipped through the reeds like a mist in the glade;

And he laughed like thin silver, and piped a thin note,

As he flapped in the shadows his shadowy coat.

O! the toes of his slippers were twisted and curled,

40

But he danced like a wind out into the world.

He is gone, and the valley is empty and bare

Where lonely I stand and lonely I stare.

Then suddenly out in the meadows beyond,

Then back in the reeds by the shimmering pond,

45 Then afar from a copse where the mosses are thick

A few little notes came trillaping quick.

I leapt o’er the stream and I sped from the glade,

For Tinfang Warble it was that played;

I must follow the hoot of his twilight flute

50

Over reed, over rush, under branch, over root,

And over dim fields, and through rustling grasses

That murmur and nod as the old elf passes,

Over old hills and far away

Where the harps of the Elvenfolk softly play.

Earlier readings:

1–2 ’Twas a very quiet evening once in June—

And I thought that stars had grown bright too soon—

Cf. the prose text, p. 94: ‘The Noldoli say that [the stars] come out too soon if Tinfang Warble plays’.

8 from the shores of the mere] by the fairies’ mere

9 Elvenhome] emendation made on the text of the final version, replacing ‘Fairyland’.

24 Till the stars came out, as it seemed, too soon.

Cf. the note to line 2.

25–6 They always come out when he warbles and plays,

And they shine bright blue as long as he stays.

Cf. the prose