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Originally Posted by The Complain of Mim the Dwarf, Part 3
So I devised a proper way of hoarding them, like goods in a storehouse, that wise memory may find them again. For everywhere they lay on the floor, or piled in the corners, and some hung on pegs on the walls - like the pages of an ancient book of dwarven tales, which time has faded and the winds have ravaged.
Clap-clip-clatter! Crack-tap, tom-tom-tap! Tack-tack! Timber and bones! No time to lose. The work begins. Think, speak, carve, gouge, file, nail. No time to rest. Thus I craft my great coffer, filled with compartments and secret drawers. Dragon-guardians glower from the lid, twining and spiraling up from their grasping claws. Ancient dwarves with axes flank its mighty clasp. Clap-clapp, tack-tack! Hammer and nails, tink-tonk, the key was forged and bound by magic. Yes! The great lid fell closed, and my weary eyes too. Long did I sleep, head upon my treasure-chest, my hoard of memories and bygone years.
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Okay, so the open question is still when all this is taking place. The poem seems to be post-Turin: Mim flees the wreck of Amon Rudh, takes refuge in a sandy hole and starts muttering about making jewellery. Then he drops into prose, and says that he saw many beautiful things in his youth, and set himself to craft them. He made many beautiful things, but realised he had put so much of himself into them that there was little left. Then he made a great dragon-crowned chest to store them in, that he might not lose himself.
But is that what he's doing
now, after his flight? Or is he muttering to himself about what he did
before, and what has been taken from him?
hS