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Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc
I call your attention to the last two lines. I always understood it as either something poetic which does not really refer to any actual point in presumed future, or that it is kind of a "wishful thinking in hope that evil shall prevail". As in, that the Barrow-wight here means "you're going to lie here until Sauron claims Middle-Earth again, which is going to happen eventually, mwahaha". But, of course, there is a more logical explanation, and that is, that this is talking about some time in the future... remember, the point of this "sleep" is that the hobbits are supposed to sleep there, well, "forever": so we are talking about the "end of times"... and there... regardless how the Barrow-wight may or may not think it will end, eschatologically... we are looking towards Dagor Dagorath, when Morgoth (the Dark Lord) will come back and "lift up his hand over dead sea and withered land", huh? I am not sure if I am not projecting too much into this, but it is about the only logical explanation that fits in here, and it fits perfectly.
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That's my view of the wight's incantation: almost a prayer for the vision of Sauron's ultimate goal to come to pass. Since Sauron portrayed himself as a god to his servants, this would not be out of keeping for the
spirit (pun intended) of such a view.
But contrast that with Bombadil's "banishing" song:
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Get out, you old Wight! Vanish in the sunlight!
Shrivel like the cold mist, like the winds go wailing,
Out into the barren lands far beyond the mountains!
Come never here again! Leave your barrow empty!
Lost and forgotten be, darker than the darkness,
Where gates stand for ever shut, till the world is mended.
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With the last two lines of Tom's song, he seems to send the wight the future way of the Witch-king, Sauron, and Saruman: doomed to a lonely, impotent existence in the waste.
And finally, Tom mentions a 'mending', which appears to be a quite different version from the wight's. Tom sees the world's end as it should (shall) be, and in his overcoming the wight, seems to confirm his is the right one.