Favourite sections/paragraphs/poems

[Corwyn Celesil]

OK, I simply had to add another bit. Tolkien's poem "Errantry" later became, through many incarnations, the story of Earendil. His invented trisyllabic rhythms are magnificent, and the whole thing is whimsical:

There was a merry passenger,
a messenger, an errander;
he took a tiny porriger
and oranges for provender;
he took a little grasshopper
and harnessed her to carry him;
he chased a little butterfly
that fluttered by to marry him.
He made him wings of taffeta
to laugh at her and catch her with;
he made her shoes of beetle-skin
with needles in to latch them with.
They fell to bitter quarrelling,
and sorrowing he fled away;
and long he studied sorcery
in Ossory a many day.
He made a shield and morion
of coral and of ivory;
he made a spear of emerald
and glimmered all in bravery;
a sword he made of malachite
and stalactite, and brandished it,
he went and fought the dragon-fly
called wag-on-high and vanquished it.
He battled with the Dumbledores,
and bumbles all, and honeybees,
and won the golden honey-comb,
and running home on sunny seas
in ship of leaves and gossamer
with blossom for a canopy,
he polished up and burnished up
and furbished up his panoply.
He tarried for a little while
in little isles, and plundered them;
and webs of all the attercops
he shattered, cut, and sundered them.
And coming home with honey-comb
and money none--remembered it,
his message and his errand too!
His derring-do had hindered it.