In a City Lost and Dead

A sable hill, gigantic, rampart-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
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 our rich hours;
And no voise stirs; and all the marble towers
White, hot and soundless, ever burn and sleep.



        The Bidding of the Minstrel

Sing us yet more of Earendil the wandering,
Chant us a lay of his white-oared ship,
More marvellous-cunning than mortal man's pondering,
Foamily musical out on the deep.
Sing us a tale of immortal sea yearning
The Eldar once made ere the change of the light,
Weaving a winelike spell, and a burning
Wonder of spray and the odours of night;
Of murmurous gloamings out om far oceans;
Of his tossing at anchor off islets forlorn
To the unsleeping waves' never-ending sea-motions;
Of bellying sails when a wind was born,
And the gurgling bubble of tropical water
Tinkled from under the ringed gem.
Gallantly bent on measureless faring
Ere she came homing in a sea-laden flight
Circuitous, lindering, restlessly daring,
Coming to haven unlooked for, at night.

But the music is broken, the words half forgotten,
The sunlght has faded, the moon is grown old,
The Elven ships foundered or werd-sweathed and rotten,
The fire and the wonder of hearts is acold.
Who now can tell, ans what harp can accompany
With melodies strange enough, rich enough tunes,
Pale with the magic of cavernous harmony,
Loud with shore-music of beaches and dunes,
How slender his boat; of what glimmering timber;
How her sails were all silvern and taper her mast,
And silver her throat with foam and her limber
Flanks as she swanlike floated past!
The song I can sing is but shreds one remembers
Of golden imaginings fashioned in sleep,
A whispered  tale told by the withering embers
Of old things far off that but few hearts keep.



        The Shores of Faery

East of the Moon, west of the Sun
There stands a lonely hill;
Its feet are in the pale green sea,
Its towers are white and still,
Beyound Taniquetil
In Valinor.
Comes never there but one lonely star
That fled before the moon;
And there two trees naked are
Thet bore Night is silver bloom,
That bore the globed fruit of Noon
In Valinor.
There are the shores of Faery
With their moonlit pebbled strand
Whose foam is silver music
On the opalescent floor
Beyoung the great sea-shadows
On the marches of the sand
That stretches on for ever
To the dragonhead door,
The gateway to the Moon,
Beyound Taniquetil
In Valinor.
West of the Sun, east of the Moon
Lies the haven of the Star,
The white town of the Wanderer
And the rocks of Eglamar.
There Wingelot is harboured,
While Earendil looks afar
O'er the darkness to the waters
Between here and Eglamar--
Out, out, beyound Taniquetil
In Valinor afar.