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| Poems and Tales of Middle-Earth:
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(illustration by Ted Nasmith) |
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(Aragorn's song for Gondor)
"Gondor! Gondor,
between the Mountains and the Sea!
West Wind blew there;
the light upon the Silver Tree
Fell like bright rain
in gardens of the Kings of old.
O proud walls! White towers!
O wingéd crown and throne of gold!
O Gondor, Gondor!
Shall Men behold the Silver Tree,
Or West Wind blow again
between the Mountains and the Sea?"
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(illustration by Alan Lee) |
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The Lord of the Rings
Part II. The Two Towers
Quotes from Tolkien's Novel
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| Rohan: The Hunt |
"There they picked up the trail of the Orcs. It needed little skill to find.
'No other folk make such a trampling,' said Legolas. 'It seems their delight to slash and beat down
growing things that are not even in their way.' " |
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"The woods about the lake they left behind. Long slopes they climbed,
dark, hard-edged against the sky already red with sunset. Dusk came. They passed away, grey shadows in a stony land. " |
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"Turning back they saw across the River the far hills kindled. Day leaped
into the sky. The red rim of the sun rose over the shoulders of the dark land. Before them in the West the world lay still,
formless and grey; but even as they looked, the shadows of night melted, the colours of the waking earth returned: green
flowed over the wide meads of Rohan; the white mists shimmered in the water-vales; and far off to the left, thirty leagues
or more, blue and purple stood the White Mountains, rising into peaks of jet, tipped with glimmering snows, flushed with
the rose of the morning." |
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"At the bottom they came with a strange suddenness on the grass of Rohan.
It swelled like a green sea up to the very foot of the Emyn Muil. The falling stream vanished into a deep growth of cresses
and water-plants, and they could hear it tinkling away in green tunnels, down long slopes towards the fens of Entwash Vale
far away. They seemed to have left winter clinging to the hills behind. Here the air was softer and warmer, and faintly
scented, as if spring was already stirring and the sap was flowing again in herb and leaf. Legolas took a deep breath, like
one that drinks a great draught after long thirst in barrel places." |
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" 'The thought of those merry young folk driven like cattle burns my heart'
(Legolas)." |
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"But now all the land was empty, and there was a silence that did not seem to be the
quiet of peace.
'There is something strange at work in this land. I distrust the silence. I distrust even the pale
Moon. The stars are faint; and I am weary as I have seldom been before, weary as no Ranger should be with a clear
trail to follow. There is some will that lends speed to our foes and sets an unseen barrier before us: a weariness that
is in the heart more than in the limb. [...] Saruman!' muttered Aragorn." |
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"Stone-hard are the Dwarves in labour or journey, but this endless chase began to
tell on him, as all hope failed in his heart. Aragorn walked behind him, grim and silent, stooping now and again to
scan some print or mark upon the ground. Only Legolas still stepped as lightly as ever, his feet hardly seeming to press
the grass, leaving no footprints as he passed; but in the waybread of the Elves he found all the sustenance that he
needed, and he could sleep, if sleep it could be called by Men, resting his mind in the strange paths of elvish dreams,
even as he walked open-eyed in the light of this world." |
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"The sun sank and the shadows of evening fell like a curtain. They were alone in a
grey formless world without mark or measure. Only far away north-west there was a deeper darkness against the dying
light: the Mountains of Mist and the forest at their feet." |
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