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(illustration by John Howe) |
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(illustration by Alan Lee) |
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The Lord of the Rings
Part I. The Fellowship of the Ring
Quotes from Tolkien's Novel
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| Lothlórien: Cerin Amroth. |
"Frodo looked up and caught his breath. They were standing in an open space. To the
left stood a great mound, covered with a sward of grass as green as Springtime in the Elder Days. upon it, as a double
crown, grew two circles of trees: the outer had bark of snowy white, and were leafless but beautiful in their shapely
nakedness; the inner were mallorn-trees of great height, still arrayed in pale gold. High amid the branches of a towering
tree that stood in centre of all there gleamed a white flet. At the feet of the trees, and all about the green hillsides
the grass was studded with small golden flowers shaped like stars. Among them, nodding on slender stalks, were other
flowers, white and palest green: they glimmered as a mist amid the rich hue of the grass. Overall the sky was blue, and
the sun of afternoon glowed upon the hill and cast long green shadows beneath the trees." |
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"The others cast themselves down upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo stood awhile in
still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light
was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear-cut, as if they
had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no
colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment
first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful. In winter here no heart could mourn for the summer or
spring." |
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"He turned and saw that Sam was now standing beside him, looking round with a puzzled
expression, and rubbing his eyes as if he was not sure that he was awake. 'It's sunlight and bright day, right enough,' he said. 'I thought that
Elves were all for moon and stars: but this is more elvish than anything I ever heard tell of. I feel as if I was
inside a song, if you take my meaning.' " |
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"Frodo felt that he was in a timeless land that did not fade or change or fall
into forgetfulness. When he had gone and passed again into the outer world, still Frodo the wanderer from the Shire
would walk there, upon the grass among elanor and niphredil in fair Lothlórien." |
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"As Frodo prepared to follow him, he laid his hand upon the tree beside the ladder:
never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree's skin and of the life within
it? He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the
living tree iself." |
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"Frodo looked and saw, still at some distance, a hill of many mighty trees, or a city of green
towers: which it was he could not tell. Out of it, it seemed to him that the power and light came that held all the land
in sway. He longed suddenly to fly like a bird to rest in the green city." |
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"At the hill's foot, Frodo found Aragorn, standing still and silent as a tree; but
in his hand was a small golden bloom of elanor, and a light was in his eye. He was wrapped in some fair memory:
and as Frodo looked at him he knew that he beheld things as they once had been in the same place. For the grim years
were removed from the face of Aragorn, and he seemed clothed in white, a young lord tall and fair; and he spoke words
in the Elvish tongue to one whom Frodo could not see. Arwen vanimelda, namarië! he said." |
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"Far away up on the hills they could hear the sound of singing falling from on high
like soft rain upon leaves." |
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