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Lament for Boromir -- J R R Tolkien

45 poems done and not a single Tolkien from me? Time to rectify that...
(Poem #46) Lament for Boromir
Through Rohan over fen and field where the long grass grows
The West Wind comes walking, and about the walls it goes.
'What news from the West, O wandering wind, do you bring to me tonight?
Have you seen Boromir the Tall by moon or by starlight?'
'I saw him ride over seven streams, over waters wide and grey;
I saw him walk in empty lands, until he passed away
Into the shadows of the North. I saw him then no more.
The North Wind may have heard the horn of the son of Denethor.'
'O Boromir! From the high walls westward I looked afar,
But you came not from the empty lands where no men are.'

From the mouths of the Sea the South Wind flies, from the sandhills and the stones;
The wailing of the gulls it bears, and at the gate it moans.
'What news from the South, O sighing wind, do you bring to me at eve?
Where now is Boromir the fair? He tarries and I grieve.'
'Ask not of me where he doth dwell --- so many bones there lie
On the white shores and the dark shores under the stormy sky;
So many have passed down Anduin to find the flowing Sea.
Ask of the North Wind news of them the North Wind sends to me!'
'O Boromir! Beyond the gate the seaward road runs south,
But you came not with the wailing gulls from the grey sea's mouth.'

From the Gate of Kings the North Wind rides, and past the roaring falls;
And clear and cold about the tower its loud horn calls.
'What news from the North, O mighty wind, do you bring to me today?
What news of Boromir the Bold? For he is long away.'
'Beneath Amon Hen I heard his cry. There many foes he fought.
His cloven shield, his broken sword, they to the water brought.
His head so proud, his face so fair, his limbs they laid to rest;
And Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, bore him upon its breast.'
'O Boromir! The Tower of Gaurd shall ever northward gaze
To Rauros, golden Rauros-falls, until the end of days.'
-- J R R Tolkien
Tolkien's massive popularity sometimes leads people (who ought to know
better) to dismiss him as being a lightweight author - a writer of
lowbrow, escapist fairy tales which no serious student of literature
should bother with.

If you ask me, nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact is, Tolkien was (and is) one of the greatest lyric poets of the
20th century; indeed, I can think of no poet after Yeats with such a
facility for creating hauntingly beautiful turns of phrase that resonate
in your memory long after you read them... you come across a snatch of
verse from Tolkien, and you think, "That sounds so *right*"... it's as
if the poetry has existed for eternity, and Tolkien simply plucked it
out of the ether and put it down on paper.

His cult following on campuses around the should also not obscure the
fact that Tolkien's  writing was carefully and painstakingly researched,
drawing on a variety of sources (Norse epic poetry, Anglo-Saxon
alliterative verse, heroic rhyming couplets...) to create an evocative,
yet deceptively simple style of his own. The above poem is a good
example of his work: the language is unstrained and natural, the metre
and rhyme is never anything less than perfect, the images (especially
the striking descriptions of whole landscapes in a few short words) are
haunting...

The poem also has a wonderful unity of structure and composition - the
apostrophes to (in turn) the three winds and their respective answers
form a natural progression, culminating in the last couplet; the
repetition of the phrase 'Rauros, golden Rauros-falls' adds to the
poignancy of the lament.

thomas.

PS. A brief glossary / guide:

Boromir, son of Denethor: one of the members in the Fellowship of the
Ring; died defending his weaker companions against overwhelming numbers.
Called Boromir the Tall.

Amon Hen: 'Hill of Sight'. Where Boromir fought his last battle.

Anduin: the Great River of Middle Earth; Boromir was laid to rest in a
boat and set free to float down the river and into the sea.

Rauros: 'Noise-foam'. A series of waterfalls on the Anduin, near Amon
Hen.

Rohan: Just a place.

Note the detail in the geography: part of the magic of Tolkien's world
is the elaborate care with which he constructed the landscapes, the
histories, the etymologies...

53 comments: ( or Leave a comment )

Martin DeMello said...

> yet deceptively simple style of his own. The above poem is a good
> example of his work: the language is unstrained and natural, the metre
> and rhyme is never anything less than perfect, the images (especially
> the striking descriptions of whole landscapes in a few short words) are
> haunting...

the metre is decidedly less than perfect ('by moon or by starlight' to quote
just one example). this is (imo, of course) due to the fact (and of all the
fantasy authors i've read, only tolkien would have thought of something like
this) that legolas is a better poet than aragorn is. this hypothesis is
borne out by the fact that the middle verse is a lot more potically dense,
as far as imagery and evocativeness is concerned, than the outer two. in
particular, the four (or possibly six) lines starting 'what news from the
south, oh sighing wind' are by far the most shiver-inducingly beautiful part
of the poem.

> The poem also has a wonderful unity of structure and composition - the
> apostrophes to (in turn) the three winds and their respective answers
> form a natural progression, culminating in the last couplet; the
> repetition of the phrase 'Rauros, golden Rauros-falls' adds to the
> poignancy of the lament.

said effect also being very much enhanced by the alliteration (you ought
have pointed out, in passing, how heavily yet naturally it was used in the
poem).

m.

BerZerK said...

I have bought a double-cd from the "tolkien-ensemble"
music is composed to the poems in the book and is
accompanied by professional singers.

i also recommend the cd from an ensemble called "the starlit jewel".
there are also songs from the books and especially a track called
"lay of nimrodel" which is sung by a woman gives me the shivers.

i wished we had such cds for our german translations, too.
in fact there is a band called "windstill" ...but their interpretation
seems to me to be nothing but a strange hippie inspired music
and not a majestic classic medieval music.

i especially point out a song about "the leaving of the shire"
which starts relatively ok... but then climaxes
into some strange rhythms and disharmonic wishiwashi where
you are forced to imagine a "grass stoned" hobbit dancing almost
naked around with a necklace of wooden pearls and flowers in his hair.
*ack*

BerZerK from Bavaria, Germany

edb said...

Observe that the song has a strong sea-rithm. In the first lines of each verse, when applying the right stress, you can actually feel the swell of the waves as they run towards the coast. Finally (O Boromir!) the wave breaks and runs dead on the sand. In the last sentence, the water retracts and flows back to the sea.

IMO, the music and maybe even part of the wording are of an ancient song of Gondor. Aragorn of course knows it well and only needs to 'customize' it to apply to Boromir. Interestingly, Legolas of Mirkwood also seems to know the song. His verse though has little to do with Boromir; rather it applies to his own kindred passing down Anduin and over the Sea to Valimar. Maybe the song is Elvish in origin, and taken to the South by Amroth, Nimrodel and their people, where it was adopted by Men of Númenor, and so became part of Gondorean tradition. (Of course, this is all very wild speculation.)

Anonymous said...

Colin Rudd did an amazing version of this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT5-ZLJTi0I&feature=related

Anonymous said...

The Wind’s Lament - http://is.gd/thewindslament

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Peter Shor said...

I think Aragorn is using the meter of Anglo-Saxon poetry, while Legolas is using modern English ballad meter. This explains both why they sound different and why Aragorn's verses sound off to us. If you read Aragorn's part the way you would read Beowulf, it sounds much better.

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