The Lost Road and Other Writings. Christopher Tolkien

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СКАЧАТЬ voices move in veiléd choir,

      Or shrill in sudden singing sheer.

      And the woods are filled with wandering fire.

      The wandering fires the woodland fill,

      In glades for ever green they glow,

      In dells that immortal dews distill

      And fragrance of all flowers that grow.

      There melodies of music spill,

      And falling fountains plash and flow,

      And a water white leaps down the hill

      To seek the sea no sail doth know.

      Its voices fill the valleys low,

      Where breathing keen on bent and briar

      The winds beyond the world’s edge blow

      And wake to flame a wandering fire.

      That wandering fire hath tongues of flame

      Whose quenchless colours quiver clear

      On leaf and land without a name

      No heart may hope to anchor near.

      A dreamless dark no stars proclaim,

      A moonless night its marches drear,

      A water wide no feet may tame,

      A sea with shores encircled sheer.

      A thousand leagues it lies from here,

      And the foam doth flower upon the sea

      ’Neath cliffs of crystal carven clear

      On shining beaches blowing free.

      There blowing free unbraided hair

      Is meshed with light of moon and sun,

      And tangled with those tresses fair

      A gold and silver sheen is spun.

      There feet do beat and white and bare

      Do lissom limbs in dances run,

      Their robes the wind, their raiment air –

      Such loveliness to look upon

      Nor Bran nor Brendan ever won,

      Who foam beyond the furthest sea

      Did dare, and dipped behind the sun

      On winds unearthly wafted free.

      Than Tir-nan-Og more fair and free,

      Than Paradise more faint and far,

      O! shore beyond the Shadowy Sea,

      O! land forlorn where lost things are,

      O! mountains where no man may be!

      The solemn surges on the bar

      Beyond the world’s edge waft to me;

      I dream I see a wayward star,

      Than beacon towers in Gondobar

      More fair, where faint upon the sky

      On hills imagineless and far

      The lights of longing flare and die.

My father turned again later to The Nameless Land, and altered the title first to Ælfwine’s Song calling upon Eärendel and then to The Song of Ælfwine (on seeing the uprising of Eärendel). There are many texts, both manuscript and typescript, of The Song of Ælfwine, forming a continuous development. That development, I feel certain, did not all belong to the same time, but it seems impossible to relate the different stages to anything external to the poem. On the third text my father wrote afterwards ‘Intermediate Version’, and I give this here; my guess is – but it is no more than a guess – that it belongs to about the time of The Lost Road. Following it are two further texts which each change a few lines, and then a final version with more substantial changes (including the loss of a whole stanza) and an extremely interesting prose note on Ælfwine’s voyage. This is certainly relatively late: probably from the years after The Lord of the Rings, though it might be associated with the Notion Club Papers of 1945 – with the fifth line of the last verse (a line that entered only in this last version) ‘The white birds wheel; there flowers the Tree!’ compare the lines in the poem Imram (see p. 82), of the Tree full of birds that Saint Brendan saw:

      The Tree then shook, and flying free

      from its limbs the leaves in air

      as white birds rose in wheeling flight,

      and the lifting boughs were bare.

      Of course the imrama of Brendan and Ælfwine are in any case closely associated. – There follow the texts of the ‘intermediate’ and final versions.

      THE SONG OF ÆLFWINE

      (on seeing the uprising of Eärendel)

      There lingering lights still golden lie

      on grass more green than in gardens here,

      On trees more tall that touch the sky

      with swinging leaves of silver clear.

      While world endures they will not die,

      nor fade nor fall their timeless year,

      As morn unmeasured passes by

      o’er mead and mound and shining mere.

      When endless eve undimmed is near,

      o’er harp and chant in hidden choir

      A sudden voice upsoaring sheer

      in the wood awakes the Wandering Fire.

      The Wandering Fire the woodland fills:

      in glades for ever green it glows,

      In dells where immortal dew distils

      the Flower that in secret fragrance grows.

      There murmuring the music spills,

      as falling fountain plashing flows,

      And water white leaps down the hills

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