The Lost Road and Other Writings. Christopher Tolkien

in hidden choir

      A sudden voice up-soaring sheer

      In the wood awakes the wandering fire.

      With wandering fire the woodlands fill:

      In glades for ever green it glows;

      In a dell there dreaming niphredil

      As star awakened gleaming grows,

      And ever-murmuring musics spill,

      For there the fount immortal flows:

      Its water white leaps down the hill,

      By silver stairs it singing goes

      To the field of the unfading rose,

      Where breathing on the glowing briar

      The wind beyond the world’s end blows

      To living flame the wandering fire.

      The wandering fire with quickening flame

      Of living light illumines clear

      That land unknown by mortal name

      Beyond the shadow dark and drear

      And waters wild no ship may tame.

      No man may ever anchor near,

      To haven none his hope may aim

      Through starless night his way to steer.

      Uncounted leagues it lies from here:

      In wind on beaches blowing free

      Neath cliffs of carven crystal sheer

      The foam there flowers upon the Sea.

      O Shore beyond the Shadowy Sea!

      O Land where still the Edhil are!

      O Haven where my heart would be!

      The waves still beat upon thy bar,

      The white birds wheel; there flowers the Tree!

      Again I glimpse them long afar

      When rising west of West I see

      Beyond the world the wayward Star,

      Than beacons bright in Gondobar

      More fair and keen, more clear and high.

      O Star that shadow may not mar,

      Nor ever darkness doom to die.

      Ælfwine (Elf-friend) was a seaman of England of old who, being driven out to sea from the coast of Erin [ancient name of Ireland], passed into the deep waters of the West, and according to legend by some strange chance or grace found the ‘straight road’ of the Elvenfolk and came at last to the Isle of Eressëa in Elvenhome. Or maybe, as some say, alone in the waters, hungry and athirst, he fell into a trance and was granted a vision of that isle as it once had been, ere a West-wind arose and drove him back to Middle-earth. Of no other man is it reported that he ever beheld Eressëa the fair. Ælfwine was never again able to rest for long on land, and sailed the western seas until his death. Some say that his ship was wrecked upon the west shores of Erin and there his body lies; others say that at the end of his life he went forth alone into the deeps again and never returned.

It is reported that before he set out on his last voyage he spoke these verses:

      Fela bið on Westwegum werum uncúðra

      wundra and wihta, wlitescýne lond,

      eardgeard Ylfa and Ésa bliss.

      Lýt ænig wát hwylc his longað sý

      þám þe eftsíðes yldu getwǽfeð.

      ‘Many things there be in the West-regions unknown to Men, many wonders and many creatures: a land lovely to behold, the homeland of the Elves and the bliss of the Valar. Little doth any man understand what the yearning may be of one whom old age cutteth off from returning thither.’

Here reappears the idea seen at the end of the outline for the Ælfwine story in The Lost Road (p. 80), that after seeing a vision of Eressëa he was blown back again by a wind from the West. At the time when the outline was written the story that Ælfwine actually came to Tol-eressëa and was there told ‘the Lost Tales’ was also present (p. 78), and in the same way it seems from the present passage that there were the two stories. The idea that Ælfwine never in fact reached the Lonely Isle is found in a version of the old tale of Ælfwine of England, where he did not leap overboard but returned east with his companions (II. 332–3).

The verses that he spoke before his last voyage are those that Alboin Errol spoke and translated to his father in The Lost Road (p. 44), and which were used also in the title-pages to the Quenta Silmarillion (p. 203).

      The retention of the name Gondobar right through from The Nameless Land is notable. It is found in the late version of the poem The Happy Mariners, which my father afterwards dated ‘1940?’ (II. 274–5): ‘O happy mariners upon a journey far, / beyond the grey islands and past Gondobar’. Otherwise Gondobar ‘City of Stone’ is one of the Seven Names of Gondolin (II. 158, 172; III. 145–6).