[Mithalwen]

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
but journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that I shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above my mast!


Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar.
Nail elyë hiryva. Namárië!

Tolkien finds better words than I ever could. Crystal Heart has taken ship suddenly and too soon, and left us all behind. To her family and friends, all I can say is "Grief is the price we pay for love" and you are in my thoughts.


"I am standing on the seashore and I see
a ship spread out her white sails and
start for the blue ocean. I watch her
until she is a speck of white clouds
where the sea and the water meet. I say,
"There—she's gone."

Gone where? Gone from my eyesight,
that's
all. Yet she is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as when she left my side—
And able to bear her cargo to her distant
harbor.

Her diminishing size is in me—not in her.
After I say, "There—she's gone". Others
are watching for her coming, and other
voices shout "There---she comes".
And that is dying - that is death. "