Compare "For in the autumn their leaves fall not, but turn to gold. Not till the spring comes and the new green opens do they fall" (LotR, II, vi), which is Legolas on the Mellyrn of Lothlórien, with "Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn also was gone, and the land was silent. There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave" (LotR, App. A, V, italics mine).
The unusual fading of nature, that is, the falling of the old leaves before the opening of the new, mark the grave change in the land of Lothlórien. One might even ask whether this may be due to the absence of Nenya then.
Also, consider the first lines of Galadriel's doom-foreboding Namárië: "Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen, / Yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!" (LotR II, viii), which translates to "Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind, long years numberless as the wings of trees!" (ibid.)
Her earlier song deals with the same matter of the dwindling of the Elves set against the image of nature: While here beyond the Sundering Seas now fall the Elven-tears. / O Lórien! The Winter comes, the bare and leafless Day; / The leaves are falling in the stream, the River flows away." (ibid.)
This theme goes as far back as the 1915 (and later) poem of Kortirion, which I highly recommend.
|