It wasn’t until I looked at my calendar yesterday that I realized I had overlooked Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien’s birthday. So, I am going to make up for it today by sharing a song/poem that I have always enjoyed from his book The Hobbit (it’s made even better in the film from 2021).
The song/poem is called “Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold,” and it is sung by Thorin II Oakenshield. I am sharing stanzas eight, nine, and ten, which include a description of the men of Dale and the oncoming onslaught of the sinister dragon Smaug. Tolkien’s poem reads as a dark message of foreboding violence to me, as it definitely informs the fate of the party that goes to smite Smaug.
Boy, The Hobbit is such a fantastically dark book.
Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold (stanzas eight, nine, and ten)
The bells were ringing in the dale
And men they looked up with faces pale;
The dragon’s ire more fierce than fire
Laid low their towers and houses frail.
The mountain smoked beneath the moon;
The dwarves they heard the tramp of doom.
They fled their hall to dying fall
Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.
Far over the misty mountains grim
To dungeons deep and caverns dim
We must away, ere break of day,
To win our harps and gold from him!
Works Cited
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit. anderson1.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=24440&dataid=44258&FileName=hobbit.pdf. Accessed 4 Jan. 2022.
