The City of the Gods

From Tolkien Gateway

The City of the Gods is a poem written by J.R.R. Tolkien and published in Spring 1923 in the magazine The Microcosm, Vol.8 No.1. It was published earlier on 30 April 1915 as Kôr with the subtitle "In a City Lost and Dead" and can also be read within The Book of Lost Tales Part One.[1]

The Poem[edit | edit source]

A sable hill, gigantic, rampant-crowned
stands gazing out across an azure sea
under an azure sky, on whose dark ground
impearled as 'gainst a floor of porphyry
gleam marble temples white, and dazzling halls;
and tawny shadows fingered long are made
in fretted bars upon their ivory walls
by massy trees rock-rooted in the shade
like stony chiselled pillars of the vault
with shaft and capital of black basalt.
There slow forgotten days for ever reap
the silent shadows counting out rich hours;
and no voice stirs; and all the marble towers
white, hot and soundless, ever burn and sleep.

See also[edit | edit source]

References