Welcome to The Great Hall of Poets, our poetry feature showcasing the talent of Middle-earth fans. So come and join us by the hearth, and enjoy!
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
The Steward and the White Lady
by: Cassie Hughes
She lay bereft of all she loved and wished her life was done, That King had never called her back from limbo’s darkened home, Within these hallowed healing halls her heart felt caged anew, What now for maid without a shield? No cause to cleave unto?
In waking dreams she wandered there a ghost in living form, Her hopes and dreams dispersed as dust, her mind encased in storm, ‘Twas thus he first did spy her there caught up in moonlights glow And from that moment lost his heart to Rohan’s greatest jewel.
Fair Eowyn he then pursued though she desired naught But finding honour within death, this goal, her only thought, With inner strength he persevered and piece by piece did steal Away despair and hopelessness, her zest for life reveal.
At last the scales fell from her eyes, she finally perceived, The wise and steadfast prince of men to whom her heart had cleaved, The Steward and the Lady found at last their just reward, A strong, enduring love in which to live in light restored.
~~ * ~~
I’ve included this following poem to commemorate Remembrance Day. It’s one I wrote as part of my Literature degree in memory of my Grandfather. Lest We Forget
Grandad Speaks
by: Kelvarhin
They called me Jack, Though my mates Called me Snowy.
A hazel-eyed beauty, From London’s east-end, Became my life’s love. Two adored daughters, Completed our home.
War intervened, To the R.A.F. I soared. Not to drop bombs, Or dogfight in the sky, Dinghy Drop rescues Were my choice to fly.
The fates made their call, Rescuers missing, Lost over North Sea. Three simple words, All that were shared.
Missing in action.
No body to mourn, No grave to cry on. A telegraphed epitaph, My Loves only memorial.
~~ * ~~
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Welcome to The Great Hall of Poets, our poetry feature showcasing the talent of Middle-earth fans. So come and join us by the hearth, and enjoy!
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
“The Sea Calls us Home”
By: Caroline Flynn
The wind is cold: soon the last leaf shall fall And all shall be covered by winter’s pall. In the restless breeze I hear a call. The Sea calls us home.
Upon this Middle-earth we have endured storm and gale, But now our long years begin to fade and fail, Upon the grey ships we must set sail. For the Sea calls us home.
O land we have loved through the lengthening years, Enriched by our labor, watered by our tears, Why now are you grown so cold and drear? Why does the Sea call us home?
This sorrow of our hearts is not feigned For in this land we have lived and reigned And with our blood is this land stained. But the Sea calls us home.
The Sea! Whose waters contain the memory of old, The eternal Music it most closely holds Our griefs and triumphs its voice enfolds. Thus the Sea calls us home.
To the straight road of the West we now turn, To the undying West for which our hearts now yearn Where the Evening Star begins to burn. For the Sea calls us home.
~~ * ~~
Numenor’s Lament
By: L. May
Life’s many treasures
Drowned in sea spray.
Waves cover memories,
Flooding, razing,
All that was great.
Floating bodies swirl,
Like wave-kissed pebbles,
Tumbling and spinning.
Water foams over,
In unending motion,
Advancing and retreating,
With relentless ruin,
Till flotsam drifts,
Upon restless waves.
Memory fades,
Born out to sea,
Drawn down into
Ulmo’s cold, dark realm.
~~ * ~~
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
If you have read The Lord of the Rings, there is a good chance that you skipped over one or more of the 75 songs and poems in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic. Yet long before he was the “father of modern fantasy”, Tolkien’s great ambition was to be a poet.
He wrote hundreds of poems throughout his life, running the gamut from playful limericks to lengthy verse epics in Old English alliterative meter (verse that focuses on alliteration, the repetition of consonant sounds in two or more words or syllables). But despite his prolific poetic output, Tolkien remains best-known for his prose. Published by Harper Collins, The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien – the first tome to bring together all of his poetry – will not alter its author’s reputation as a storyteller first and foremost, but it will offer readers illuminating new insights into this oft-neglected side of his personality.
This new book has been in the works since 2016, when Christopher Tolkien sent editors Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull several folders of his father’s unpublished poetry. Hammond and Scull are two of the world’s most respected Tolkien scholars, having written painstaking reference works such as the J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide (2017) and The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion (2008). They have also edited previous works by Tolkien, including the short poetry collection The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (2014).
Between them, Hammond and Scull have precisely the obsessive eye for detail and encyclopaedic knowledge of Tolkien’s corpus required to pull off such an undertaking. And once you hold this deluxe, three-volume, 1,500-page tome in your hands, you will grasp just how monumental an undertaking it is.
The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien contains nearly 250 individual works spanning more than five decades, 70 of them previously unpublished.
Hammond and Scull do not present the poems as standalone texts. They meticulously document the manuscript history of each poem from initial fragments to final drafts, tracing their evolution over the course of years or even decades.
This is because Tolkien would frequently return to the same poem throughout his life, revising and reworking it over and over – much as he did with his literary mythology.
The Sea-Bell is a perfect example. In 1934, Tolkien published a poem in The Oxford Magazine entitled Looney. It describes a man’s voyage to an enchanted other-world and his desolation upon returning to ordinary life afterwards.
Almost 30 years later, Looney underwent major redrafting to become The Sea-Bell, which was published in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil in 1962. The poem’s basic narrative arc remained the same, but the imagery was darker, more evocative, more devastating. The protagonist is utterly cut off from his contemporaries, with no words to communicate an experience they cannot understand.
But The Sea-Bell is not merely a revision of its predecessor. Looney was conceived and published as an independent work. In The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, on the other hand, The Sea-Bell is framed as a text written by an unnamed hobbit within Middle-earth, which Tolkien had discovered and translated for modern readers. This conceit invites readers to put the poem in direct conversation with the themes of melancholy and sea-longing which run throughout The Lord of the Rings.
By charting how the poem and its context changed over time, Hammond and Scull show how its meaning changed too.
Many of us live with a nagging sense that industrialised modernity has cut us off from the cosmos, from nature and from our authentic selves. The Romantics and their inheritors believed that art could reconnect us to what is deepest and truest in ourselves and in the world around us – could re-enchant the world.
This is one way to read Tolkien’s entire literary project. He suggests as much in his famous essay On Fairy-Stories (1947).
Eminent Tolkien researcher Verlyn Flieger reads The Sea-Bell as a profound expression of disenchantment, a reflection perhaps of Tolkien’s service in the first world war. But the powers of re-enchantment are at work elsewhere in his work, in the elven-realm of Lothlórien for instance. This dialectic of disconnection and reconnection lies at the heart of Tolkien’s enduring appeal.
As The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien attests, that same dynamic is at play in his poetry as much as his prose. But be forewarned: this book is not for the faint of heart. Its massive scope, and the academic presentation of the material, are better suited to the Tolkien scholar than the casual reader – certainly not the one who leapfrogs the songs in The Lord of the Rings.
But if you, like me, feel a compulsion to own everything released under the professor’s name, that is hardly going to stop you.
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Welcome to The Great Hall of Poets, our poetry feature showcasing the talent of Middle-earth fans. So come and join us by the hearth, and enjoy!
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
“To Save a Friend”
by Caroline Flynn
Two red eyes, gleaming in the dark: Two eyes, filled with fiendish lust and desire. Not the light they hoped to pierce their prison stark! Not this end in torture and hellish fire.
Another gone, one more companion dead, In the dark dungeons of that accursed isle; Another werewolf cruelly fed While their master sits above with his triumphant smile.
At last, only two are left alive: Together, Beren and Felagund wait – Wait for the teeth and claws, sharper than knives. How can they escape their terrible fate?
Two red eyes appear in the night. To Felagund they rove, but on Beren they land. But lo! The evil dark is pierced by light As Finrod takes against evil a last stand.
Black blood mingling with the red, Black fur and golden hair, A terrible price Finrod pays in Beren’s stead, There in Tol-in-Gaurhoth, in evil’s lair.
The chains are rent, the dark wizardry spent, And league of love and trust unbroken Unto the Elven-king great strength lent So that in the darkness hope was awoken.
But no! Defeat seems all their prize! The Oath’s doom strikes the Oath-bound. And mortally wounded, Finrod slowly dies, His breath and Beren’s tears the only sounds.
Then Finrod speaks as he in torment lies, And he touches the ring upon Beren’s hand; The golden flowers, the serpents with emerald eyes Such a heavy weight, that small band!
“Namarie!” I go now to the halls beyond Valinor. Alas, that I could do no more upon this quest; But remember me, when I am no more. Namarie! I go now to my rest!”
Beren mourned, and called his name, Finrod Felagund – fair, beloved, and brave. But his last stand was not in vain: Blood for blood was rendered, a friend to save.
~~ * ~~
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Welcome to The Great Hall of Poets, our regular feature showcasing the talent of Middle-earth fans. Each month we will feature a small selection of the poems submitted, but we hope you will read all of the poems that we have received here in our Great Hall of Poets.
So come and join us by the hearth, and enjoy!
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Forth rode Earnil, last king of Gondor
Upon the Witch-King of Angmar to make war.
There ensued a terrible fight,
In which the Witch-King appeared and showed forth his might.
None could withstand the terror of his onslaught,
But Earnil, undeterred, would have stood and fought
Had not his horse fled, being crazed with fear
When the Witch-King with a horrible cry drew near.
The Witch-King laughed, at what he saw as fright,
But then his eyes were stung by a blinding light.
Turning his horse, away he sped,
Even as he mocked, into the darkness he fled.
He who had subjected lands and realms to his rule
And of Sauron’s servants was the most feared and cruel,
Could not withstand one who had beheld the Two Trees
And walked in lands beyond the Sundering Seas.
For Glorfindel had come up from Rivendell;
Bright was his sword, his eyes fey and fell.
He who of old had grappled with Shadow and Flame,
Unveiled his power, and with renewed might he came.
As Earnil rode back, chafing with anger and hate,
Glorfindel, gazing into the dusk, foresaw the Enemy’s fate,
Stretching far into the long years ahead.
Turning to the captain, he withheld him and said:
“Do not pursue him – far off yet is his doom!
And much more must be accomplished before the gathering of that gloom.
Not by the hand of man will he be slain:
Rather, the unlooked-for will arise and be his bane.”
And so it was, that the prophecy was spoken,
Though many years passed before it was awoken,
During the great battles fought for the One Ring,
And the Nazgul were sent forth, led by the Witch-King.
Despair and darkness he spread, wherever he went,
And the body of Theoden King apart he rent.
But then with an opponent he stood face to face,
Who was unafraid of the unseen eyes and deadly mace.
“Begone foul lord of carrion!” the clear voice spoke. “Let him lie in peace!”
“Stand not between me and my prey,” came the cold reply, “else you will go to where there is no release.”
There was sharp ring as was drawn a sword.
“No living man may hinder me!” laughed the lord.
Thus was spoken the prophecy of long ago,
The selfsame one spoken by his deadly foe.
Doubt entered the Nazgul’s mind as sun gleamed on golden hair,
And he was reminded of Glorfindel the fair.
“No man am I!” a woman’s voice returned,
And in Eowyn of Rohan’s eyes a fearless light burned.
The fell beast of the Witch-King reared up and rose,
Its rider furious that anyone should dare him oppose.
But Eowyn leapt aside, and clove off the beast’s head,
And from the ruin rose the dark and deadly Dread.
With a mighty stroke he broke her arm and clove her shield,
And it looked as though he would triumph upon Pelennor Field.
But in that hour Eowyn stood not alone,
And in the darkness another desperate courage shone.
From behind a sword pierced the sinews of the Witch-King’s knee,
And with a despairing cry, from his terror the world was set free.
Neither swordsman tall nor warrior strong
Had done this deed so worthy of song.
Only Merry the Hobbit, from the humble Shire
Out of love had helped the maiden in her need so dire.
And so it was: not by the hand of man did the Witch-King fall
But at the hand of a woman of the Golden Hall
And by a dagger taken from the tomb of a barrow-wight,
Wound with spells for his demise, in that long-ago fight.
~~ * ~~
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Welcome to The Great Hall of Poets, our regular feature showcasing the talent of Middle-earth fans. Each month we will feature a small selection of the poems submitted, but we hope you will read all of the poems that we have received here in our Great Hall of Poets.
So come and join us by the hearth, and enjoy!
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
Memories of the Second Age
By H. Wiggins
We look to old days, and hold to them fast.
When woodlands were green, and Arda still young,
From Autumn to Spring, and days now long passed.
Of rings and their lords, and sonnets once sung.
Before Elves crossed the west in ships of grey,
And Fellowships were formed to follow their road.
When Dwarves delved deeper into the fray,
And men’s lives were long, the seas their abode.
The shadows linger, though chained they were thought,
And the light of two trees fades into night.
Peace will not last, though for long it was fought.
Alliances form to carry the light.
Free folk will stand true and Sauron will rage
For these are the days of the Second Age.
If you have a Tolkien/Middle-earth inspired poem you’d like to share, then send it to poetry@theonering.net. One poem per person may be submitted each month. Please make sure to proofread your work before sending it in. TheOneRing.net is not responsible for poems posting with spelling or grammatical errors.
