The Eärendel Poems

Some of J.R.R. Tolkien's earliest writings (1914-1915) were poems centered on Eärendel. Christopher Tolkien publishes four of these poems in The Book of Lost Tales - Volume II. Poetry has never been a love of mine but reading enough of Tolkien's has made it much more bearable. The Eärendel poems (as I call them) are as follows:

• Éalá Éarendel Engla Beorhtast (Old English for The Last Voyage of Eärendel)
• The Bidding of the Minstrel, from the Lay of Eärendel
• The Shores of Faëry
• The Happy Mariners

I leave you with the opening stanza of the first poem:

"Éarendel arose where the shadow flows 

At Ocean's silent brim;

Through the mouth of night as a ray of light

Where the shores are sheer and dim

He launched his bark like a silver spark

From the last and lonely sand;

Then on sunlit breath of day's fiery death

He sailed from Westerland" (p. 267, The Book of Lost Tales - Volume II).