O names of dust and fire!
When shall the glamour of them fade,
Or when the pity tire?
On strange adventure came they, he
Unwilling escort of the queen
That was to be; unwilling she
To wed the king she ne’er had seen.
And who, that knows how love may be
Bound not by any man’s decree,
But works its wilful way and free
To what dim fate it cannot see,
Through peril and through woe,
Shall wonder that between these twain,
The goodliest of all splendid men,
The loveliest woman living then,
A spell, a charm their souls to chain,
A bond of dread, delightful pain
Silent and strong should grow?”
The Love-Song of Tristram and Iseult, Cyril Emra.
“They bore back Beren Camlost son of Barahir upon a bier of branches with Huan the wolfhound at his side; and night fell ere they returned to Menegroth. At the feet of Hirilorn the great beech Lúthien met them walking slow, and some bore torches beside the bier. There she set her arms about Beren, and kissed him bidding him await her beyond the Western Sea; and he looked upon her eyes ere the spirit left him. But the starlight was quenched and darkness had fallen even upon Lúthien Tinuviel. Thus ended the Quest of the Silmaril; but the Lay of Leithian, Release form Bondage does not end.
For the spirit of Beren at her bidding tarried in the halls of Mandos, unwilling to leave the world, until Lúthien came to say her last farewell upon the dim shores of the Outer Sea, whence Men that die set out never to return. But the spirit of Lúthien fell down into darkness, and at the last it fled, and her body lay like like a flower that is suddenly cut off and lies for a while unwithered on the grass.
Then a winter, as it were the hoar age of mortal Men, fell upon Thingol. But Lúthien came to the halls of Mandos, where are the appointed places of the Eldalie, beyond the mansions of the West upon the confines of the world. There those that wait sit in the shadow of their thought. But her beauty was more than their beauty, and her sorrow deeper than their sorrows; and she knelt before Mandos and sang to him.
The song of Lúthien before Mandos was the song most fair that ever in words was woven, and the song most sorrowful that ever the world shall ever hear. Unchanged, imperishable, it is sung still in Valinor beyond the hearing of the world, and the listening the Valar grieved. For Lúthien wove two themes of words, of the sorrow of the Eldar and the grief of Men, of the Two Kindreds that were made by Ilúvatar to dwell in Arda, the Kingdom of Earth amid the the innumerable stars. And as she knelt before him her tears fell upon his feet like rain upon stones; and Mandos was moved to pity, who never before was so moved, nor has been since.”
Of Beren and Lúthien, The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien.
Hahahaha! :3
Art Nouveau Doors
(Photos uncredited as I collected them on my hard-drive a long time ago!)
<3
