Poetry!

So I was thinking. Why don't I put up one of those Tolkien-poems I've written. Not the most original of ideas I've had, I'll admit.

And so I am putting it up. Written in the back of an Aerospace-101 class, the only piece of third-person poetry I have ever written. (Whoa. That makes it sound as if I've written a lot of poems. Surely people know better.)

Anyhou, here it goes. It's been more than two years, and I still haven't been able to come up with a title. Good, huh?

Mithrandir

In ships they came,
From yonder silver shores;
Soon after the shadows fell,
On woods of green and so much more.

In Moria, in Khazad-dûm,
A shadow's formed in the once clean dark;
Where Durin once had met his doom,
He may not come back again.

In Rhôvanion, in the Greenwood Great,
Where elves linger since age unknown;
A darkness fell over the land,
And fell things came under Oak and Beech.

In the east that was wild, bereft of lords,
The old that was feared had now come back;
Dread was great in these men of night,
For long had they under evil dwelt.


The blessed ones came in numbers five,
Pale and cloaked, hooded and staffed;
Thus they came to the Gulf of Lune,
Where Círdan hailed them from afar.

In front of all was one in White,
A light there was seen in his eyes,
And a might there was seen in his voice;
Leader he was of all the five.

And in his trail came a figure in Brown,
Following who were the twain in Blue;
Lost now they are to the western cause,
Bereft of purpose, roaming the wild.

The last seemed like an old man in Grey,
Seemed less in might than the other four.
But a fire nevertheless was in his eyes,
And a staff much gnarled was in his hands.


They were sent by the lords of the west,
As messengers to the lands in the east;
To form an order, great in might,
To check the growth of this Shadow from the past.

In this they failed, all but one:
The twain in Blue were lost in the east,
The one in Brown took off with Bird and Beast.
The leader in White, the west he betrayed.

Yet one remained, faithful till last.
Webs he wove, subtle their strands.
Prime was he, in cleansing the land,
In destroying the Shadow, Sauron returned.

Mithrandir, O Pilgrim Grey!
He assumed the Mantle of White.
The White he pitted, against the dark:
The White burned the hotter, down fell the Black.

-Pavan Srinath