The Horns of Ylmir: Difference between revisions
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This song, told in full in [[The Shaping of Middle-earth]], was written in three versions and five texts, allegedly made by [[Tuor]] for his son [[Eärendil]] about [[Ylmir]]/[[Ulmo]]'s calling him. Note the [[Noldor|Gnomish]] translation of Ulmo.[[Image:John Howe - Ulmo, Lord of the Waters.jpg|thumb|300px| | This song, told in full in [[The Shaping of Middle-earth]], was written in three versions and five texts, allegedly made by [[Tuor]] for his son [[Eärendil]] about [[Ylmir]]/[[Ulmo]]'s calling him. Note the [[Noldor|Gnomish]] translation of Ulmo.[[Image:John Howe - Ulmo, Lord of the Waters.jpg|thumb|300px|'' Ulmo, Lord of the Waters'' by [[John Howe]].]] | ||
Revision as of 19:21, 30 April 2006
This song, told in full in The Shaping of Middle-earth, was written in three versions and five texts, allegedly made by Tuor for his son Eärendil about Ylmir/Ulmo's calling him. Note the Gnomish translation of Ulmo.
The Horns of Ylmir
from 'The Fall of Gondolin'
'Tuor recalleth in a song sung to his son Eärendil the visions that Ylmir's conches once called before him in the twilight in the Land of Willows.'
- 'Twas in the Land of Willows where the grass is long and green—-
- I was fingering my harp-strings, for a wind had crept unseen
- And was speaking in the tree-tops, while the voices of the reeds
- Were whispering reedy whispers as the sunset touched the meads
- Inland musics subtly magic that those reeds alone could weave
- 'Twas in the Land of Willows that once Ylmir came at eve.
- In the twilight by the river on a hollow thing of shell
- He made immortal music, till my heart beneath his spell
- Was broken in the twilight, and the meadows faded dim
- To great grey waters heaving round the rocks where sea-birds swim.
- I heard them wailing round me where the black cliffs towered high
- And the old primeval starlight flickered palely in the sky.
- In that dim and perilous region in whose great tempestuous ways
- I heard no sound of men's voices, in those eldest of the days,
- I sat on the ruined margin of the deep-voiced echoing sea
- Whose roaring foaming music crashed in endless cadency
- On the land besieged for ever in an aeon of assaults
- And torn in towers and pinnacles and caverned in great vaults;
- And its arches shook with thunder and its feet were piled with shapes
- Riven in old sea-warfare from those crags and sable capes.
- Lo! I heard the embattled tempest roaring up behind the tide
- When the trumpet of the first winds sounded, and the grey sea sang and cried
- As a new white wrath woke in him, and his armies rose to war
- And swept in billowed cavalry toward the walled and moveless shore.
- There the windy-bannered fortress of those high and virgin coasts
- Flung back the first thin feelers of the elder tidal hosts;
- Flung back the restless streamers that like arms of a tentacled thing
- Coiling and creeping onward did rustle and suck and cling.
- Then a sigh arose and a murmuring in that stealthy-whispering van,
- While, behind, the torrents gathered and the leaping billows ran,
- Till the foam-haired water-horses in green rolling volumes came—-
- A mad tide trampling landward—and their war-song burst to flame.
- Huge heads were tossed in anger and their crests were towers of froth
- And the song of the great seas were singing was a song of unplumbed wrath,
- For through that giant welter Ossë's trumpets fiercely blew,
- That the voices of the flood yet deeper and the High Wind louder grew;
- Deep hollows hummed and fluted as they suck the sea-winds in;
- Spumes and great white spoutings yelled shrilly o'er the din;
- Gales blew the bitter tresses of the sea in the land's dark face
- And wild airs thick with spindrift fled on a whirling race
- From battle unto battle, till the power of all the seas
- Gathered like one mountain about Ossë's awful knees,
- And a dome of shouting water smote those dripping black facades
- And its catastrophic fountains smashed in deafening cascades.
- Then the immeasurable hymn of Ocean I heard as it rose and fell
- To its organ whose stops were the piping of gulls and the thunderous swell;
- Heard the burden of the waters and the singing of the waves
- Whose voices came on for ever and went rolling to the caves,
- Where an endless fugue of echoes splashed against wet stone
- And arose and mingled in unison into a murmuring drone—-
- 'Twas a music of uttermost deepness that stirred in the profound,
- And all the voices of all oceans were gathered to that sound;
- 'Twas Ylmir, Lord of Waters, with all-stilling hand that made
- Unconquerable harmonies, that the roaring sea obeyed,
- That its waters poured off and Earth heaved her glistening shoulders again
- Naked up into the airs and cloudrifts and sea-going rain,
- Till the suck and suck of green eddies and the slap of ripples was all
- That reached to mine isléd stone, save the old unearthly call
- Of sea-birds long-forgotten and the grating of ancieng wings.
- Thus murmurous slumber took me mid those far-off eldest things
- (In a lonely twilit region down whose old chaotic ways
- I heard no sound of men's voices, in those eldest of the days
- When the world reeled in the tumult as the Great Gods tore the Earth
- In the darkness, in the tempest of the cycles ere our birth),
- Till the tides went out, and the Wind died, and did all sea musics cease
- And I woke to silent caverns and empty sands and peace.
- Then the magic drifted from me and that music loosed its bands—
- Far, far-off, conches calling—lo! I stood in the sweet lands,
- And the meadows were about me where the weeping willows grew,
- Where the long grass stirred beside me, and my feet were drenched with dew.
- Only the reeds were rustling, but a mist lay on the streams
- Like a sea-roke drawn far inland, like a shred of salt sea-dreams.
- 'Twas in the Land of Willows that I heard th'unfathomed breath
- Of the Horns of Ylmir calling—and shall hear them till my death.