At last, weary and feeling finally defeated, he sat on a step below the level of the passage-floor and bowed his head into his hands. It was quiet, horribly quiet. The torch, that was already burning low when he arrived, sputtered and went out; and he felt the darkness cover him like a tide. And then softly, to his own surprise, there at the vain end of his long journey and his grief, moved by what thought in his heart he could not tell, Sam began to sing.
His voice sounded thin and quavering in the cold dark tower: the voice of a forlorn and weary hobbit that no listening orc could possibly mistake for the clear song of an Elven-lord. He murmured old childish tunes out of the Shire, and snatches of Mr. Bilbo’s rhymes that came into his mind like fleeting glimpses of the country of his home. And then suddenly new strength rose in him, and his voice rang out, while words of his own came unbidden to fit the simple tune.In western lands beneath the Sun
the flowers may rise in Spring,
the trees may bud, the waters run,
the merry finches sing.
Or there maybe ’tis cloudless night
and swaying beeches bear
the Elven-stars as jewels white
amid their branching hair.Though here at journey’s end I lie
in darkness buried deep,
beyond all towers strong and high,
beyond all mountains steep,
above all shadows rides the Sun
and Stars for ever dwell:
I will not say the Day is done,
nor bid the Stars farewell.J.R.R. Tolkein, The Return of The King
It’s been a busy week — we’re still apartment (or flat)-hunting, D.’s had a week of meetings at work, and have been ambivalent about actually getting out and doing anything, as we’ve had days of grayness and rain. However, tomorrow takes us to Pitlochry, where the Highland Games are held each summer. We’ll be walking to see the salmon runs, and hope to see a bit of the famed wildlife that the area holds.
The temperatures have raised to the mid-fifties and the light leaches more and more gradually from the world. The mornings seem much the same, but the long evenings stretch out the day, giving us a foretaste of Midsummer to come. Everyone told us that if we could but survive the winter, we’d revel in the summer in this place, as we would have more energy and time enough to do many things. We’re beginning to believe it. If we can survive rising earlier and earlier — lately between 2:30 and 3:00 a.m. — for a confused hour or two of sleeplessness in response to the rising light — we may just enjoy the coming seasons.
May Spring have finally found you wherever you are.
Pax,
– D & T
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Apartment hunting again? I need to catch up with you!
the sun rise would be just a bit too early for me. I though that 6 is bad enough.