[Bêthberry]

I'm going back to Lush's remembrance that Arwen and Aragorn were betrothed in Lothlorien, for that point has taken me back to the Lothlorien chapter in LOTR.

The chapter concludes with Frodo finding Aragorn "wrapped in some memory." The passage is long but rewards quotation.

At the hill's foot Frodo found Aragorn, standing still and silent as a tree; but in his hand was a small golden bloom of elanor, and a light was in his eyes. He was wrapped in some fair memory: and as Frodo looked at him he knew that he beheld things as they once had been in this same place. For the grim years were removed from the face of Aragorn, and he seemed clothed in white, a young lord tall and fair; and he spoke words in the Elvish tongue to one whom Frodo could not see. Arwen vanimelda, namarië! he said, and then he drew a breath, and returning out of his thought he looked at Frodo and smiled.

"Here is the heart of Elvendom on earth, " he said," and here my heart dwells forever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we still must tread, you and I. Come with me!" And taking Frodo's hand in his, he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as living man.

The bolding is, of course, my own, but what suggestive possibilities lie within that phrasing! It is left open to suggest that Aragorn does come again, but not as living man.

There is yet more of Cerin Amroth. Frodo finds Aragorn at the foot of the hill, but just before this, Frodo had followed Haldir up the hill into the circle of white trees. Here is what Frodo experiences, and here also is an even more suggestive passage.

Though he walked and breathed, and about him living leaves and flowers were stirred by the same cool wind as fanned his face, Frodo felt that he was in a timeless land that did not fade or change or fall into forgetfulness. When he had gone and passed again into the outer world, still Frodo the wanderer from the Shire would walk there, upon the grass among elanor and niphredil in fair Lothlorien.

Again, the bolding is my own. What does that phrase, "passed again into the outer world" mean? It is simply an eloquent way to describe Frodo's return to the task and obligation he has laid upon himself? Or are we to read here of the circles beyond Middle-earth? Does Frodo, even after he sails West for respite and thence to die, return in unearthly form to Cerin Amroth?

And yet more still. Cerin Amroth is the heart of the ancient realm , "the mound of Amroth" where his house was built, and, indeed, Frodo's experience of it describes the particular elven 'magic', the unity of experience, thought and creation, as well as any other passage in Tolkien's Legendarium, I would think. "Mound" is used rather than barrow, but 'mound' is used elsewhere to refer to burial mound, as in Eómer's cry upon the death of Théoden, yet what the site commemorates is rather Amroth's and the elves' achievement.

It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear uct, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured forever. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them nd made for them names new and wonderful.

The lay which Legolas sings of Lothlorien is the story of the elf-maid Nimrodel and her lover Amroth, a song of how sorrow came upon Lothlorien.

It is any wonder that there could be a more fitting, symbolic place for Arwen to be laid?