Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Hope

Bilbo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring:

I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;
For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.
Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.
I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see.
But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.

And this, late in Lord of the Rings:
There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was a light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo’s side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.

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