Goblin Feet
Goblin Feet was a poem written by J.R.R. Tolkien in April of 1915, around the same time that he wrote the poem You and Me / and the Cottage of Lost Play. In The Book of Lost Tales: Part I, Christopher Tolkien quotes his father as saying, "I wish the unhappy little thing, representing all that I came (so soon after) to fervently dislike, could be buried for ever." Here is part of the poem:
I am off down the road
Where the fairy lanterns glowed
And the little pretty flitter-mice are flying
A slender band of gray
It runs creepily away
And the hedges and the grasses are a-sighing.
The air is full of wings,
And of blundery beetle-things
That warn you with their whirring and their humming.
O! I hear the tiny horns
Of enchanged leprechauns
And the padded feet of many gnomes a-coming!
O! the lights! O! the gleams! O! the little twinkly sounds!
O! the rustle of their noiseless little robes!
O! the echo of their feet - of their happy little feet!
O! the swinging lamps in the starlit globes.
I must follow in their train Down the crooked fairy lane Where the coney-rabbits long ago have gone. And where silvery they sing In a moving moonlit ring All a twinkle with the jewels they have on. They are fading round the turn Where the glow worms palely burn And the echo of their padding feet is dying! O! it's knocking at my heart- Let me go! let me start! For the little magic hours are all a-flying.
O! the warmth! O! the hum! O! the colors in the dark! O! the gauzy wings of golden honey-flies! O! the music of their feet - of their dancing goblin feet! O! the magic! O! the sorrow when it dies.
