I walked by the sea, and there came to me,
as a star-beam on the wet sand,
a white shell like a sea-bell;
trembling it lay in my wet hand...
Then I saw a boat silently float
On the night-tide, empty and grey...
It bore me away, wetted with spray,
wrapped in a mist, wound in a sleep,
to a forgotten strand in a strange land.
In the twilight beyond the deep
I heard a sea-bell swing in the swell,...— fromThe Adventures of Tom Bombadil, 1962
Tolkien's poetry is extremely varied, including both the poems and songs ofMiddle-earth, and other verses written throughout his life.J. R. R. Tolkien embedded over 60 poemsin the text ofThe Lord of the Rings; there are others inThe Hobbit andThe Adventures of Tom Bombadil; and many more in hisMiddle-earth legendarium and other manuscripts which remained unpublished in his lifetime, some of book length. Some 240 poems, depending on how they are counted, are in hisCollected Poems, but that total excludes many of the poems embedded in his novels. Some are translations; others imitate different styles ofmedieval verse, including theelegiac, while others again are humorous or nonsensical. He stated that the poems embedded in his novels all had a dramatic purpose, supporting the narrative. The poems are variously in modern English,Old English,Gothic, andTolkien's constructed languages, especiallyhis Elvish languages,Quenya andSindarin.
Tolkien's poetry has long been overlooked, and almost never emulated by other fantasy writers. Readers often skip over the poems inThe Lord of the Rings, thinking them an unwelcome distraction. Since the 1990s, Tolkien's poetry has received increased scholarly attention. Analysis shows that it is both varied and of high technical skill, making use of differentmetres and rarely usedpoetic devices to achieve its effects. All the poems inThe Lord of the Rings have been set to music byThe Tolkien Ensemble.
J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was a scholar of English literature at theUniversity of Oxford. He was aphilologist interested in language and poetry from theMiddle Ages, especially that ofAnglo-Saxon England and Northern Europe. His professional knowledge of poetical works such asBeowulf andSir Gawain and the Green Knight shaped his fictional world ofMiddle-earth. His intention to create what has been called "a mythology for England"[T 1] led him to construct not only stories but a fully formed world withits own languages, peoples, cultures, andhistory.[1] He is best known for writing the fantasy novelThe Lord of the Rings.[2]
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.[T 2]
The Lord of the Rings contains at least 61 poems,[3] perhaps as many as 75 if variations andTom Bombadil's sung speeches are included.[4] The verses include songs of many genres: for wandering,marching to war,drinking, and having a bath; narrating ancient myths,riddles,prophecies, and magical incantations; of praise and lament (elegy); some of these are found inOld English poetry.[5]
Several Tolkien scholars have commented on Tolkien's poetry.Michael Drout wrote that most of his students admitted to skipping the poems when readingThe Lord of the Rings, something that Tolkien was aware of.[6] Andrew Higgins wrote that Drout had made a "compelling case" for studying it. The poetry was, Drout wrote, essential for the fiction to work aesthetically and thematically; it added information not given in the prose; and it brought out characters and their backgrounds.[6] Thomas Kullmann and Dirk Siepmann note that all the poems follow in traditional genres, such as Old English charms, elegies, and riddles; Middle English nature songs; or English folklore songs for the nursery, the church, the tavern, the barrack room, festivals, or for activities such as walking. They comment that many of these poems are far from conventional lyrical poetry such as that ofWordsworth orKeats, since evoking "the poet's personal feelings" was not Tolkien's intention.[7] Tolkien indeed wrote in a letter that
the verses inThe L.R. are all dramatic: they do not express the poor old professor's soul-searchings, but are fitted in style and contents to the characters in the story that sing or recite them, and to the situations in it."[T 3]
| Song genre[5] | Occurs inOld English[5] | Example | Adapted to context[T 3] |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walking songs | — | "The Road goes ever on and on"[T 2] "Upon the hearth the fire is red"[T 4] | Frodo goes walking, beginning a long and unknownquest[T 4] |
| Marching songs | — | "We come, we come with roll of drum"[T 5] | TheEnts go to war, knowing that doom, very likely their own, is approaching[T 5] |
| Drinking songs | — | "Ho! Ho! Ho! To the Bottle I Go"[T 6] | The hobbits relax after frightening encounters withBlack Riders inthe Shire[T 6] |
| Bathing songs | — | "Sing hey! for the bath at close of day"[T 7] | Thehobbits take a bath after escaping the perils ofThe Old Forest[T 7] |
| Narrating ancient myths | E.g. "The Fight at Finnsburg" inBeowulf [8] | "An Elven-maid there was of old"[T 8] | InLothlórien, as the companions recover from the loss ofGandalf,Legolas the Elf sings of times long ago[T 8] |
| Riddles | E.g.in the Exeter Book[9] | "Ere iron was found or tree was hewn"[T 9] | Gandalf hints toThéoden of theEnts he is about to meet[T 9] |
| Prophecies | — | "Seek for the Sword that was broken"[T 10] | Aragorn and theOne Ring are introduced atThe Council of Elrond[T 10] |
| Magical incantations | E.g. inLacnunga ("Remedies") "against Water-Elf Disease"[10] | "Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky"[T 11] | Gandalf tells Frodo the nature of thering he has been given[T 11] |
| Songs of praise | — | "Long live the Halflings! Praise them with great praise!"[T 12] | The Men of Gondor shout praise to Frodo and Sam for destroying the Ring[T 12] |
| Elegies | E.g.Scyld Scefing's funeral inBeowulf [11] | "Beneath Amon Hen I heard his cry"[T 13] | Boromir's friends and travelling-companions give him a boat-burial[T 13] |
Brian Rosebury agrees that the distinctive thing about Tolkien's verse is its "individuation of poetic styles to suit the expressive needs of a given character or narrative moment".[12] Diane Marchesani, inMythlore, considers the songs inThe Lord of the Rings as "thefolklore of Middle-earth", calling them "an integral part of the narrative".[13] She distinguishes four kinds of folklore: lore, including rhymes of lore, spells, and prophecies; ballads, from the Elvish "Tale of Tinuviel" to "The Ent and the Entwife" with its traditional question-answer format; ballad-style, simpler verse such as the hobbits' walking-songs; and nonsense, from "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late" to Pippin's "Bath Song". In each case, she states, the verse is "indispensable" to the narrative, revealing both the characters involved and the traditions of their race.[13]
What?Old Man Willow?
Naught worse than that, eh?
That can soon be mended.
I know the tune for him.
Old grey Willow-man!
I'll freeze his marrow cold,
if he don't behave himself.
I'll sing his roots off.
I'll sing a wind up and
blow leaf and branch away.
Old Man Willow![T 14]
The poetry ofthe Shire is, inTom Shippey's words, "plain, simple, straightforward in theme and expression", verse suitable forhobbits, but which varies continuously to suit changing situations and growing characters.[14] Bilbo'sOld Walking Song, "The Road goes ever on and on / Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet..." is placed at the start ofThe Lord of the Rings. It reappears, sung byFrodo, varied with "weary feet" to suit his mood, shortly before he sees aRingwraith; and a third time, at the end of the book, by a much aged, sleepy, forgetful, dying Bilbo inRivendell, when the poem has shifted register to "But I at last with weary feet / Will turn towards the lighted inn, My evening-rest and sleep to meet". Shippey observes that the reader can see that the subject is now death. Frodo, too, leaves Middle-earth, but witha different walking-song, singing of "A day will come at last when I / Shall take the hidden paths that run / West of the Moon, East of the Sun", which Shippey glosses as the "Lost Straight Road" thatgoes out of the round world, straight toElvenhome.[14]
In contrast to the hobbits, Tom Bombadil only speaks in metre.[15] The Tolkien scholar David Dettmann writes that Tom Bombadil's guests find that song and speech run together in his house; they realise they are all "singing merrily, as if it was easier and more natural than talking".[16][T 15] Such signals are, Forest-Hill asserts, cues to the reader to look for Tolkien's theories of "creativity, identity, and meaning".[15]
Shippey states that inThe Lord of the Rings, poetry in the metre of Old English verse is used to give a direct impression of the oral tradition of theRiders of Rohan; Tolkien's "Where now the horse and the rider?" echoes theOld English poemThe Wanderer, while "Arise now, arise, Riders of Theoden" is based on theFinnesburg Fragment. In Shippey's opinion, these poems are about memory "of the barbarian past",[17] and the fragility of oral tradition makes what is remembered specially valuable. As fiction, he writes, Tolkien's "imaginative re-creation of the past adds to it an unusual emotional depth."[17] Some of the poems are inalliterative verse, recreating the feeling of Old English poetry, with its use of rhythm and alliteration. Among these areAragorn's lament forBoromir, which recallsScyld Scefing'sship-burial inBeowulf.[18] In Shippey's view, the three epitaph poems inThe Lord of the Rings, including "The Mounds of Mundburg" and, based on the famousUbi sunt? passage inThe Wanderer, Tolkien's "Lament of the Rohirrim",[6][19][20] represent Tolkien's finest alliterative Modern English verse.[6]
Underthe Mountain dark and tall
The King has come unto his hall!
His foe is dead, theWorm of Dread,
And ever so his foes shall fall.
The sword is sharp, the spear is long,
The arrow swift, the Gate is strong;
The heart is bold that looks on gold;
The dwarves no more shall suffer wrong.
The Hobbit contains over a dozen poems, many of which are frivolous, but some—like the dwarves' ballad in the first chapter, which is continued or adapted in later chapters—show how poetry and narrative can be combined.[21]
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, published in 1962, contains 16 poems including some such as "The Stone Troll" and "Oliphaunt" that also appear inThe Lord of the Rings. The first two poems in the collection concernTom Bombadil, a character described inThe Fellowship of the Ring,[T 16] while "The Sea-Bell" or "Frodos Dreme" was considered by the poetW. H. Auden to be Tolkien's "finest" poetic work.[22]
The Silmarillion as edited and constructed byChristopher Tolkien does not contain explicitly identified poetry, butGergely Nagy notes that the prose hints repeatedly at the style ofBeleriand's "lost" poetry. The work's varied prose styles imply to Nagy that it is meant to represent a compendium, inChristopher Tolkien's words, "made long afterwards from sources of great diversity (poems, and annals, and oral tales)".[23][T 17] Nagy infers from verse-like fragments in the text that the poetry of Beleriand usedalliteration,rhyme, andrhythm including possiblyiambics.[23]
A king there was in days of old:
ere Men yet walked upon the mould
his power was reared in caverns' shade,
his hand was over glen and glade.
Of leaves his crown, his mantle green,
his silver lances long and keen;
the starlight in his shield was caught,
ere moon was made or sun was wrought.
Tolkien's legendarium, the mass of Middle-earth manuscripts that he left unpublished, contain several longheroic lays, edited by his son Christopher inThe Lays of Beleriand. These include the tale of the tragic figure ofTúrin Turambar in 2276 lines of verse,The Lay of the Children of Húrin, andthe Tale of Beren and Lúthien in some 4200 lines of rhyming couplets,The Lay of Leithian.[24] The fantasy novelist Suzannah Rowntree wrote thatThe Lays of Beleriand was a favourite of hers. In her view, "the book's main attraction is Part III, 'The Lay of Leithian'". She describes this as "a red-blooded, grand poem, written in a richly ornamented style bordering (in places) on thebaroque. At worst this seems a little clumsy; at best it fits the lavish, heroic story and setting." She comments thatC. S. Lewis "obviously enjoyed the poem hugely," going so far as to invent scholars Peabody and Pumpernickel who comment on what Lewispretends is an ancient text.[25]
The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son is a play, reworking the Old English poemThe Battle of Maldon, written in alliterative verse. It represents what critics agree is a biting critique of the heroic ethos, castigatingBeorhtnoth's foolish pride.[26][27][28]
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún contains two long poems, "The New Lay of the Völsungs" and "The New Lay of Gudrun", both inspired by the legend ofSigurd and the fall of theNiflungs inNorse mythology. Both poems are in a form ofalliterative verse inspired by the medieval verse of thePoetic Edda.[29]
Mordred was waking. His mind wandered
in dark counsels deep and secret.
From a window looked he in western tower:
drear and doubtful day was breaking,
grey light glimmered behind gates of cloud.
About the walls of stone wind was flowing;
sea sighed below, surging, grinding.
The Fall of Arthur is an unfinished poem on the legend ofKing Arthur.[30] It is in some 1,000 stanzas of modern English, in Old English-style alliterative verse. The historical setting is early medieval, both in form and in content, showing Arthur as aMigration periodBritish military leader fighting theSaxon invasion. Tolkien avoids the high medieval aspects of the Arthurian cycle, such as theHoly Grail and the courtly setting. The poem begins with a British "counter-invasion" to theSaxon lands (Arthur eastward in arms purposed).[31]
Songs for the Philologists is a short, unauthorised collection of poems ofphilological interest. It was privately printed without Tolkien's permission, and was withdrawn before distribution. It includes 13 by Tolkien; six of those are in Old English,[32] and one, "Bagme Bloma", is one of the few written inGothic.[33] Tolkien intended them to be sung to familiar tunes; thusOfer wídne gársecg was an Old English translation of the folk ballad "The Mermaid", beginning "Oh 'twas in the broad Atlantic, mid the equinoctial gales / That a young fellow fell overboard among the sharks and whales"; it was to be sung to "The Mermaid"'s tune, while "Bagme Bloma" was to be sung to the tune of "O Lazy Sheep!" byMantle Childe.[34]
| Tolkien'sGothic | Rhona Beare's translation | |
|---|---|---|
Brunaim bairiþ Bairka bogum | The birch bears fine |
In 2024, the Tolkien scholarsChristina Scull andWayne G. Hammond publishedThe Collected Poems of J. R. R. Tolkien.[36] The work, in three volumes, contains some 195 entries and five appendices, with a total of at least 240 of his poems, depending on how they are counted,[37] of which 70 have not been published before.[38] The collection excludes many of the poems embedded inThe Lord of the Rings andThe Hobbit, and presents the longer separately published poems as excerpts.[37] Each poem is supported by commentary and draft versions illustrating the history of its creation. Hammond stated that some of the unpublished poems are "remarkably good", while Scull said that they would extend people's "view of Tolkien as a creative writer."[38] She found the incompletewar poem "The Empty Chapel" particularly "affecting".[38] A poem in Old English,Bealuwérig ("Malicious Outlaw"), is Tolkien's translation ofLewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky", complete with invented words.[38]
In the early 1990s, the scholar of English Melanie Rawls wrote that while some critics found Tolkien's poetry "well-crafted and beautiful", others thought it "excruciatingly bad."[39] The Scottish poetAlan Bold,[40] similarly did "not think much of Tolkien's poetry as poetry."[41] Rawls wrote that Tolkien's verse was "weighed down with cliches and self-consciously decorative words".[39] On the other hand,Geoffrey Russom, a scholar of Old andMiddle English verse, considered Tolkien's varied verse as constructing "good music", with a rich diversity of structure that avoids the standardiambic pentameter of much modern English poetry.[42] The scholar of EnglishRandel Helms described Tolkien's "Errantry" as "a stunningly skillful piece of versification ... with smooth and lovely rhythms".[43] Rebecca Ankeny writes that Tolkien's poetry "reflects and supports Tolkien's notion ofSecondary Creation", embedded as it is in the text and lending it substance.[41]
Eärendil was a mariner that tarried in Arvernien;
he built a boat of timber felled in Nimbrethil to journey in;
her sails he wove of silver fair, of silver were her lanterns made,
her prow was fashioned like a swan, and light upon her banners laid.
Besides rhyme and metre, Tolkien employs numerouspoetic devices suited to the theme and context of individual poems. Several of these can be seen in the longest poem inThe Lord of the Rings, the Song of Eärendil. It makes use of rhyme,internalhalf-rhyme,alliteration, alliterativeassonance, and in Shippey's words "a frequent if irregular variation of syntax".[44] These devices serve to convey "an elvish streak ... signalled ... by barely-precedented intricacies" of poem construction, giving a feeling of "rich and continuous uncertainty, a pattern forever being glimpsed but never quite grasped", its goals "romanticism, multitudinousness, imperfect comprehension .. achieved stylistically much more than semantically."[44]
Kullmann and Siepmann note the wide variety of metres that Tolkien uses, and that he nearly always avoided the most common form of his time,iambic pentameter. Several poems are unrhymed; these are often but not alwaysalliterative, imitating Old English verse, while others are irregular, like "Sing now, ye people of the Tower of Anor". Of the rhymed verse, Tolkien often uses iambic tetrameter, as in "Gil-galad was an Elven-king", and sometimes iambic octameter, like "Eärendil was a mariner that tarried in Arvernien". Less commonly he uses other metres, including the irregular strophic rhyme of "Troll sat alone on his seat of stone", the iambic dimeter of "We come"/"To Isengard", or theballad stanza of "An Elven-maid there was of old". On a few occasions, Tolkien usesdactylic metres, such as the dactylic trimeter of "Seek for the Sword that was broken", or the dactylic tetrameter of "Legolas Greenleaf long under tree".[7]
| Rhyme? | Allit.? | Example | Metre |
|---|---|---|---|
| No | Yes | "We `heard of the `horns in the `hills `ringing"[T 18] | 4 stresses, 2 per half-line |
| No | No | "Sing now, ye people of the Tower of Anor"[T 19] | Irregular |
| Yes | No | "Gil-galad was an Elven-king"[T 20] | Iambic tetrameter |
| Yes | No | "Eärendil was a mariner that tarried in Arvernien"[T 21] | Iambic octameter |
| Yes | No | "Troll sat alone on his seat of stone"[T 22] | Irregularstrophic |
| Yes | No | "We come, we come with roll of drum"[T 5] | Iambic dimeter |
| Yes | No | "An Elven-maid there was of old"[T 8] | Ballad stanza |
| Yes | No | "Seek for the Sword that was broken"[T 10] | Dactylic trimeter |
| Yes | No | "Legolas Greenleaf long under tree"[T 23] | Dactylic tetrameter |
In a detailed reply to Rawls, the poetPaul Edwin Zimmer wrote that "much of the power of Tolkien's 'prose' comes from the fact that it's written by a poet of high technical skill, who carried his metrical training into his fiction."[45] In Zimmer's view, Tolkien could control both simple and complex metres well, and displayed plenty of originality in the metres of poems such as "Tom Bombadil" and "Eärendil".[45]
Tolkien's poems are variously in modern English,Old English,Gothic, andTolkien's constructed languages, especiallyhis Elvish languages,Quenya, such asNamárië, andSindarin, such asA Elbereth Gilthoniel. Shippey notes that Tolkien believed that thesound of a language conveyed a specific pleasure, even if untranslated.[46]
| Quenya, inTengwar script | Transliterated Quenya | Translation | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
.jpg) | Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen, | Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind, |
Hark! We have heard of Oric the hunter,
Guthlach the great-thewed, and other goodmen
Following far, fellowship vengeful,
Over the heath, into the underground,
Running their road through a rugged portal.
WhileThe Lord of the Rings has given rise to a large number ofadaptations andderivative works,[47] the poems embedded in the text have long been overlooked,[48] and almost never emulated by other fantasy writers.[45] An exception isPoul andKaren Anderson's 1991 short story "Faith", inAfter the King, a 1991 hommage to Tolkien published on the centenary of his birth. The story ends with two stanzas of "The Wrath of the Fathers, Aeland's epic", written in Old English-style alliterative verse.[49]
Seven of Tolkien's songs (all but one, "Errantry", fromThe Lord of the Rings) were made into a song-cycle,The Road Goes Ever On, set to music byDonald Swann in 1967.[50]The Tolkien Ensemble, founded in 1995, set all the poetry inThe Lord of the Rings to music, publishing it on four CDs between 1997 and 2005.[51] The settings were well received by critics.[52]
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