“The Song of Beren and Lúthien”
As Beren looked into her eyes
Within the shadows of her hair,
The trembling starlight of the skies
He saw there mirrored shimmering.
Tinúviel the elven-fair,
Immortal maiden elven-wise,
About him cast her shadowy hair
And arms like silver glimmering.
Long was the way that fate them bore,
O’er stony mountains cold and grey,
Through halls of ireon and darkling door,
And woods of nightshade morrowless.
The Sundering Seas between them lay,
And yet at last they met once more,
And long ago they passed away
In the forest singing sorrowless.-J.R.R. Tolkien
One of my abiding fannish memories is singing Galadriel’s Namárië in Quenya before placing a home-made card on Tolkien’s grave when I was seventeen. I can still sing it to this day.
