Poetry

[Darby]

from aragorn's poem: all that is gold does not glitter...
doesn't that mean that a thing that doesn't glitter can still be gold?
in my finnish translation of lotr same sentence is translated to mean: all that glitters isn't gold...weird!
(out of topic but do you guys have in your english lotr some kind of elvish dictionary?)

Yes, they turned it around in your translation. And it doesn't quite mean the same thing, does it?
And in the back of my copy of LOTR there's several appendices. Appendix A is "Annals of the Kings and Rulers," Appendix B is "The Tale of Years (Chronology of the Westlands)," Appendix C is "Family Trees," Appendix D is "The Calendars," Appendix E is "Writing and Spelling" which talks about pronunciation of words and names, and the different types of scripts they used, and Appendix F is "The Languages and the People of the Third Age." But it's not a dictionary. It just talks about the languages.
HTH!
And about the poems... It's silly, but my favorite has always been the assorted variations on "The Road Goes Ever On." And I don't write poetry, but my daughter does. She also memorizes poems - I was commenting to my husband about the "all that is gold does not glitter" line, and she suddenly came out with the entire poem.
I just asked her what her favorite poem from the Lord of the Rings is, and she started singing, "The Road goes ever on and on," [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] so I guess great minds think alike.
My all time favorite poem is one by William Butler Yeats...

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

My daughter's all time favorite poem is from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsinger...

The little queen all golden
Flew hissing at the sea
To stop each wave
Her clutch to save
She ventured bravely.

As she attacked the sea in rage
A holderman came nigh
Along the sand
Fishnet in hand
And saw the queen midsky.

He stared at her in wonder
For often he'd been told
That such as she
Could never be
Who hovered there bright gold.

He saw her plight and quickly
He looked up the cliff he faced
And saw a cave
Above the wave
In which her eggs he placed.

The little queen all golden
Upon his shoulder stood
Her eyes all blue
Glowed of her true
Undying gratitude.

However there's lots of other poets we both enjoy. Lewis Carroll, Emily Dickinson, Carl Sandburg, Rudyard Kipling, Coleridge, Longfellow - there's tons of great stuff out there!

[ July 02, 2003: Message edited by: Darby ]