[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I was very glad to find this thread, and heartened to see some very good poems here. Originally I wrote the lines that follow for the 'alliterative verse' thread, but the rules of that game are not those of the genuine Old-English alliterative style, such as can be seen in Tolkien's Lay of the Children of Húrin or real Anglo-Saxon verse, such as Beowulf or The Dream of the Rood.

Having spent hours on these two stanzas, it is clear to me that this ancient and very strict form is not for the faint-hearted.

Blessed Eärendil, boldest and brightest
Of mariners mighty in minstrelsy meshed,
Stirred with his speech the slumbering sword-arms
Of the host of the West, that withering wind
That Melkor the mighty, Morgoth the mirth-slayer
Threw from his throne as on malice he thought.

The crown of the cruel one now clasps as a collar
The neck of the Noldor's night-cloaked foe
By Valinor vanquished when victor he thought him
Of the wars of the Wide Lands, now sunk 'neath the sea
And sky-bound Eärendil sails on the star-sea
With bane-meshed Silmaril bound on his brow

Admittedly it's not up to Tolkien's standard, but I couldn't let it moulder away on a couple of pieces of note-paper. For more information on the meter and the fall of the alliterative syllables, I can give no better reference than Tolkien's essay 'On Translating Beowulf', in which those aspects of that poem are discussed in detail.