Per request of Tyellas (happy birthday!) – a poem, derived from the Annals of Beleriand, as translated by J.R.R Tolkien
I Also Loved Thee (Thingol's Lament)
I also loved thee, in distant starlit days
When all the world was twilight and was song
Under skies of black in kingdom gray
When love and laughter, earth and stars were young
Unheard, forsaken on this death-plagued shore
You were my light in lands that knew it not
My flesh and blood, my child forevermore
My divine boon in lands that gods forgot
Yet your spring ended; winter crept in slow
Ice in his wake and fire in his kiss
The doom that trailed his steps you did not know
Nor pain, did not imagine in your bliss
But he ensnared you, caught in loving chains
A fragile bird impaled upon the thorns
Of your sweet rose; my pleads were spent in vain
Forever, yours by right, you cast forlorn
It was my doing, this today I know
(For oft in grief is knowledge to be found)
When swift you fled to danger and to woe
To pain and love upon uncharted ground
Of lands that in your love you did not fear
Where lay your heart, your errand and your fate
Of that songs tell – not of my mourning here
No songs are sung of those who mourn the great
Then winter came upon me as old age
And silence fell upon this land as snow
While you your war of song and love did wage
And triumphed (or, the stories tell us so)
Your touch revived my spirit from its sleep
In memory of leaves that gently fell
And Elven maids who danced and did not weep
And loves that death and doom did not foretell
Twice-born they named you, my precious Luthien
Once from my flesh, and once from deathless love
May sweet be what short spring that yet remains
What stillborn joy, what time you still can have!
Grief gave me wisdom, my child of stars and sun
In all save this, which I will never know:
How your death you loved more than the one
Who loved you well enough to let you go
~~End~~