Painful beauty

[Eothain Elfwine]

Beautiful passages, Earendilyon. I many of the Rohirrim passages are so beautiful and painful they move me to tears:

Fey he seemed, or the battle-fury of his fathers ran like new fire in his veins, and he was borne up on Snowmane like a god of old, even as Orome the Great in the battle of the Valar when the world was young. His golden shield was uncovered, and lo! it shone like an image of the Sun, and the grass flamed into green about the white feet of his steed. For morning came, morning and a wind from the sea; and darkeness was removed, and the hosts of Mordor wailed and terror took them, and they fled, and died, and the hoofs of wrath rode over them. And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.

Still she did not blench: a maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings, slender but as a steel-blade, fair yet terrible.

"Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing inthe sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
These staves [Eomer] spoke, yet he laughed as he said them. For once more lust of battle was on him; and he was still unscathed, and he was young, and he was king: the lord of a fell people.