Best poem in Middle-earth?

[arvedui_last_king]

What's your favourite poem in Middle-earth (not including the Lays of Beleriand). Mine is King Sheave, in The Lost Road, because it is beautiful, and it links Tolkien's mythology with the mythology of the real world.

[BeardofPants]

From BoLT:
O ancient city on a leaguered hill!
Old Shadows linger in your broken gate,
Your stones are grey, your halls now are still,
Your towers silent in the mists await
Their crumbling end, while through the storeyed elms
The River Gliding leaves these inland realms
And slips between long meadows to the Sea,
Still bearing down by weir and murmuring fall
One day and then another to the Sea;
And slowly thither many days have gone
Since first the Edain built Kortirion.

[Count Comfect]

From the Hobbit:

Far over the misty mountains cold
Through dungeons deep, and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To claim our long-forgotten gold etc.

That song/poem always gives me chills for some reason.

[Lady Marion Magdalena]

The reprise to the Tra-la-la-lally song is pretty good (suprisingly). Unfortunately I haven't got a copy of the Hobbit with me...

[Rían]

I've always loved the Gil-Galad poem in LOTR, altho I'm not particularly fond of Gil-Galad ... that poem is what got me interested in the Sil and the First Age stuff. There's just something in that poem that calls to something in me ...

[littleadanel]

From the Hobbit:

Far over the misty mountains cold
Through dungeons deep, and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To claim our long-forgotten gold etc.

That song/poem always gives me chills for some reason.

I love that one! Dwarvish (sp?) singing is something to give you the chills. Gimli's song in Moria, for the same reason. (And both have awesome Hungarian translations as well.)

[Forfirith]

I haven't got a favorite poem, because I think all are really fantastic.. :cool:
But, well, I like the in khazad-dûm by Gimli too, and the one of Bilbo "The Road goes ever on and on...". I'm reading the Lost Tales now, and I've also liked the one on the Cottage of Lost Play (You and Me).

[arvedui_last_king]

Reciting off the top of my head Gimli's song:

Mighty kings in Nargothrond
and Gondolin, who now beyond
the western seas have passed away.

[littleadanel]

*goes on with reciting*

...
The world is grey, the mountains old,
the forge's fire is ashen-cold;
no harp is wrung, no hammer falls,
the darkness dwells in Durin's halls.
A shadow lies upon his tomb
in Moria, in Khazad-dum.
But still the sunken stars appear
in dark and windless Mirrormere:
there lies his crown in water deep
till Durin wakes again from sleep.

Ahh, good ol' days when I got my English copy of LOTR and was so utterly fascinated... (I used to know Bilbo's Eärendil-poem by heart. From beginning to end. :eek: Now I tend to mix its parts up...)

Currently I'm reading The Book of Lost Tales; my favourite poem so far is the Song of Aryador. ;)

[Sam]

it's more of a song, but i still thought that it shoud go here

ho, tom bombadil tom bombadillo
by the water wood and hill, by the reed and willow
by fire, sun and moon harken now and here us
come tom bombadil for our need is near us

i like it because it's one that i actualy memorized :)

[Beren3000]

My all-time middle-earth favorite poem has to be Beren's farewell song:

"Farewell sweet earth and northern sky..."

[durinsbane2244]

there was this one, little sumthin like:
there once was a man from nantucket-
er, i mean...uh...the poem bilbo does in rivendell "I sit beside the fire and think..." i love it!

[EllethValatari]

I LOVE Tolkien's Kortirion Amoung the Trees. It's so beautiful and just captures the beauty of the places where Elves dwell. I have it memorized!

[The Dread Pirate Roberts]

I like Sam's "old troll" poem.