OK, I simply had to add another bit.  Tolkien's poem "Errantry" later became, through many incarnations, the story of Earendil.  His invented trisyllabic rhythms are magnificent, and the whole thing is whimsical: 
 
There was a merry passenger, 
a messenger, an errander; 
he took a tiny porriger 
and oranges for provender; 
he took a little grasshopper 
and harnessed her to carry him; 
he chased a little butterfly  
that fluttered by to marry him.   
He made him wings of taffeta 
to laugh at her and catch her with; 
he made her shoes of beetle-skin 
with needles in to latch them with. 
They fell to bitter quarrelling, 
and sorrowing he fled away; 
and long he studied sorcery 
in Ossory a many day. 
He made a shield and morion 
of coral and of ivory;  
he made a spear of emerald 
and glimmered all in bravery; 
a sword he made of malachite 
and stalactite, and brandished it, 
he went and fought the dragon-fly 
called wag-on-high and vanquished it. 
He battled with the Dumbledores, 
and bumbles all, and honeybees, 
and won the golden honey-comb, 
and running home on sunny seas 
in ship of leaves and gossamer 
with blossom for a canopy, 
he polished up and burnished up 
and furbished up his panoply. 
He tarried for a little while 
in little isles, and plundered them; 
and webs of all the attercops 
he shattered, cut, and sundered them. 
And coming home with honey-comb 
and money none--remembered it, 
his message and his errand too! 
His derring-do had hindered it.
		 
		
		
		
		
		
		
			
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				Then came there from the south of the city the people of the Fountain, and Ecthelion was their lord, and silver and diamonds were their delight; and swords very long and bright and pale did they wield . . .
			 
		
		
		
		
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