The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 - J. R. R. Tolkien [71]
Behold now less than half the distance have they traversed, and the Twilit Isles float still far aloof, when Ossë and Ónen waylay them in the western waters of the Great Sea ere yet the mists of the Shadowy Seas are reached. Then Ossë seizes that island in his great hand, and all the great strength of Uin may scarcely drag it onward, for at swimming and in deeds of bodily strength in the water none of the Valar, not even Ulmo’s self, is Ossë’s match, and indeed Ulmo was not at hand, for he was far ahead piloting the great craft in the glooms that Ossë had gathered, leading it onward with the music of his conches. Now ere he can return Ossë with Ónen’s aid had brought the isle to a stand, and was anchoring it even to the sea-bottom with giant ropes of those leather-weeds and polyps that in those dark days had grown already in slow centuries to unimagined girth about the pillars of his deep-sea house. Thereto as Ulmo urges the whales to put forth all their strength and himself aids with all his godlike power, Ossë piles rocks and boulders of huge mass that Melko’s ancient wrath had strewn about the seafloor, and builds these as a column beneath the island.
Vainly doth Ulmo trumpet and Uin with the flukes of his unmeasured tail lash the seas to wrath, for thither Ossë now brings every kind of deep sea creature that buildeth itself a house and dwelling of stony shell; and these he planted about the base of the island: corals there were of every kind and barnacles and sponges like stone. Nonetheless for a very great while did that struggle endure, until at length Ulmo returned to Valmar in wrath and dismay. There did he warn the other Valar that the Solosimpi may not yet be brought thither, for that the isle has grown fast in the most lonely waters of the world.
There stands that island yet—indeed thou knowest it, for it is called “the Lonely Isle”—and no land may be seen for many leagues’ sail from its cliffs, for the Twilit Isles upon the bosom of the Shadowy Seas are deep in the dim West, and the Magic Isles lie backward in the East.
Now therefore do the Gods bid the Elves build a dwelling, and Aulë aided them in that, but Ulmo fares back to the Lonely Island, and lo! it stands now upon a pillar of rock upon the seas’ floor, and Ossë fares about it in a foam of business anchoring all the scattered islands of his domain fast to the ocean-bed. Hence came the first dwelling of the Solosimpi on the Lonely Island, and the deeper sundering of that folk from the others both in speech and customs; for know that all these great deeds of the past that make but a small tale now were not lightly achieved and in a moment of time, but rather would very many men have grown and died betwixt the binding of the Islands and the making of the Ships.
Twice now had that isle of their dwelling caught the gleam of the glorious Trees of Valinor, and so was it already fairer and more fertile and more full of sweet plants and grasses than the other places of all the world beside where great light had not been seen; indeed the Solosimpi say that birches grew there already, and many reeds, and turf there was upon the western slopes. There too were many caverns, and there was a stretching shoreland of white sand about the feet of black and purple cliffs, and here was the dwelling even in those deepest days of the Solosimpi.
There Ulmo sate upon a headland and spake to them words of comfort and of the deepest wisdom; and all sea-lore he told them, and they hearkened; and music he taught them, and they made slender pipes