Lament for Eorl the Young -- J R R Tolkien

Over two months since I did a Tolkien... this just will not do :-)

(Poem #220) Lament for Eorl the Young Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing? Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing? Where is the spring and the harvest and the corn growing? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow; The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow. Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning, Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning? -- J R R Tolkien

This is not so much a lament for one person as it is a lament for the passing of
time and the passing of a way of life - the Rohirrim (Eorl's people) were a
tribe of nomadic horsemen and pasturers, who settled down (became 'respectable')
a few hundred years before the events in The Lord of the Rings. This song is a
lament for the last of the nomadic chieftains (the aforementioned Eorl), who was
also the first of the Kings of the Golden Hall (as his seat of power was
called).

The imagery is (as always with Tolkien) utterly beautiful; I like it especially
for its simplicity. Which, again, is only what's to be expected from a direct
and unsophisticated (I wouldn't say 'crude') people. Another example [1] of
Tolkien's practice of matching the quality of his poetry to the skill of the
(fictional) poet supposed to have written it.

A few comments on the form: the poem is consciously modelled on Old English
verse - specifically, in the rhyming-couplet scheme and the heavy alliteration.
Indeed, Tolkien based the Rohirric language on Anglo-Saxon at a sort of
meta-linguistic level - it (i.e., true Rohirric) bears the same relation to the
Common Speech of the characters in the book as does Old English to our modern
language [2].

Lest any Middle Earth neophytes think otherwise, let me assure you that Tolkien
did indeed write poems other than elegies and laments; in fact, his narrative
comic verse is among the best there is. It's just that I happen to like the slow
dignity and poignancy with which he imbues his serious verse - it takes great
skill to pull this off without sounding pompous or ponderous; at its best,
though, such verse can be deeply moving.

thomas.

[1] See Martin's note to 'Lament for Boromir', Minstrels Poem #46
for the first example
[2] As you've probably realized by now, a large part of the seeming
'authenticity' of The Lord of the Rings stems from the author's attention to
detail and his linguistic skills; Tolkien himself commented (on more than one
occasion) that the languages of Middle Earth were the most important component
of his 'sub-creation'.