[HerenIstarion]

I won't come out with analysis this time round, but as one of the questions posed in Esty's initial post inquired about feelings, let me state that this is a chapter to send shivers down my spine more often than not (only surpassed by Rohirrim horns in the morning by the end of chapter 4 with regards to intensity of shivers ). My skin prickles as I read through the verses of the chapter:

Mourn not overmuch! Mighty was the fallen,
meet was his ending. When his mound is raised,
women then shall weep. War now calls us

and

Out of doubt, out of dark to the day’s rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.
To hope’s end I rode and to heart’s breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!

First is what he soothes his men with, caring for them, but for himself is the second verse, stating the loss of hope.

But Aragorn is again symbolic figure, the King to bring the Hope back, and his dialogue with Éomer upon their foretold meeting on the battlefield is another piece to make my hair stand on end:

Thus we meet again, though all the hosts of Mordor lay between us,’ said Aragorn. ‘Did I not say so at the Hornburg?’
‘So you spoke,’ said Éomer, ‘but hope oft deceives, and I knew not then that you were a man foresighted. Yet twice blessed is help unlooked for, and never was a meeting of friends more joyful.’ And they clasped hand in hand

Though it is unclear whether Aragorn is a Seer of a kind, or it is luck that brought them than and there to make Aragorn's words true, but one tends to believe it is not merely luck, but Luck in a sense of Fate.

And as is oft with Tolkien, the chapter resolves not in a tense of the battle, but in a tender reflection upon future lament made for the fallen, thus, indirectly hinting there will be a future, giving the attentive reader hope that despite present horror and hopelessness, there still will be people to sing:

We heard of the horns in the hills ringing,
the swords shining in the South-kingdom.
Steeds went striding to the Stoningland
as wind in the morning. War was kindled.
There Théoden fell, Thengling mighty,
to his golden halls and green pastures
in the Northern fields never returning,
high lord of the host. Harding and Guthláf
Dúnhere and Déorwine, doughty Grimbold,
Herefara and Herubrand, Horn and Fastred,
fought and fell there in a far country:
in the Mounds of Mundburg under mould they lie
with their league-fellows, lords of Gondor.
Neither Hirluin the Fair to the hills by the sea,
nor Forlong the old to the flowering vales
ever, to Arnach, to his own country
returned in triumph; nor the tall bowmen,
Derufin and Duilin, to their dark waters,
meres of Morthond under mountain-shadows.
Death in the morning and at day’s ending
lords took and lowly. Long now they sleep
under grass in Gondor by the Great River.
Grey now as tears, gleaming silver,
red then it rolled, roaring water:
foam dyed with blood flamed at sunset;
as beacons mountains burned at evening;
red fell the dew in Rammas Echor.

This is a song made some generations after, lamenting, yes, mouring is not that intense as if they were personally involved, it is more close to tender sadness than to soaring pain of bereavement, but this very tenderness of the lament is what gives hope more than anything all will come to a 'good end'

Talking of feelings again, it helps (in my personal case, of course) to 'feel the chapter' even more intensely if reading it simultaneously listening to Nightwish, album 'Century Child', specially 'End of All Hope' song, the very thing I'm doing alongside composing this post