While all about the nightingales Were singing in the trees. We dug for silver with our spades
20
By little inland sparkling seas, Then ran ashore through sleepy glades
And down a warm and winding lane We never never found again* Between high whispering trees.25
The air was neither night or day,*
But faintly dark with softest light, When first there glimmered into sight
The Cottage of Lost Play. ’Twas builded very very old*
30
White, and thatched with straws of gold, And pierced with peeping lattices That looked toward the sea;
And our own children’s garden-plots
Were there—our own forgetmenots,
35
Red daisies, cress and mustard, And blue nemophilл. O! all the borders* trimmed with box
Were full of favourite flowers—of phlox,
Of larkspur, pinks, and hollyhocks
40
Beneath a red may-tree: And all the paths were full of shapes,
Of tumbling happy white-clad shapes,
And with them You and Me.* And some had silver watering-cans
45
And watered all their gowns, Or sprayed each other; some laid plans
To build them houses, fairy towns,* Or dwellings in the trees; And some were clambering on the roof;
50
Some crooning lonely and aloof; And some were dancing fairy-rings
And weaving pearly daisy-strings, Or chasing golden bees; But here and there a little pair
55
With rosy cheeks and tangled hair
Debated quaint old childish things*—* And we were one of these.
Lines 58–65 (p. 30) were subsequently rewritten:
But why it was there came a time
When we could take the road no more,
Though long we looked, and high would climb, Or gaze from many a seaward shore To find the path between sea and sky
To those old gardens of delight; And how it goes now in that land,
If there the house and gardens stand, Still filled with children clad in white— We know not, You and I. And why it was Tomorrow came
And with his grey hand led us back;60
And why we never found the same
Old cottage, or the magic track That leads between a silver sea*1 And those old shores* and gardens fair
Where all things are, that ever were—
65
We know not, You and Me.*
This is the final version of the poem:
The Little House of Lost Play
Mar Vanwa Tyali й va
We knew that land once, You and I,
and once we wandered there in the long days now long gone by,
a dark child and a fair.5
Was it on the paths of firelight thought
in winter cold and white, or in the blue-spun twilit hours
of little early tucked-up beds
in drowsy summer night,10
that you and I in Sleep went down
to meet each other there, your dark hair on your white nightgown
and mine was tangled fair?
We wandered shyly hand in hand,
15
small footprints in the golden sand,
and gathered pearls and shells in pails,
while all about the nightingales
were singing in the trees. We dug for silver with our spades,
20
and caught the sparkle of the seas,
then ran ashore to greenlit glades,
and found the warm and winding lane
that now we cannot find again,
between tall whispering trees.
25
The air was neither night nor day,
an ever-eve of gloaming light,
when first there glimmered into sight
the Little House of Play. New-built it was, yet very old,
30
white, and thatched with straws of gold,
and pierced with peeping lattices that looked toward the sea; and our own children’s garden-plots
were there: our own forgetmenots,
35
red daisies, cress and mustard,
and radishes for tea. There all the borders, trimmed with box,
were filled with favourite flowers, with phlox,
with lupins, pinks, and hollyhocks,
40
beneath a red may-tree; and all the gardens full of folk
that their own little language spoke,
but not to You and Me.
For some had silver watering-cans
45
and watered all their gowns, or sprayed each other; some laid plans
to build their houses, little towns
and dwellings in the trees. And some were clambering on the roof;
50
some crooning lonely and aloof;
some dancing round the fairy-rings
all garlanded in daisy-strings,
while some upon their knees before a little white-robed king
55
crowned with marigold would sing
their rhymes of long ago. But side by side a little pair
with heads together, mingled hair,
went walking to and fro60
still hand in hand; and what they said,
ere Waking far apart them led,
that only we now know.
It is notable that the poem was called The Cottage, or The Little House of Lost Play, whereas what is described is the Cottage of the Children in Valinor, near the city of Kфr; but this, according to Vairл (p. 19), ‘the Cottage of the Play of Sleep’, was ‘not of Lost Play, as has wrongly been said in song among Men’.
I shall not attempt any analysis or offer any elucidation of the ideas embodied in the ‘Cottages of the Children’. The reader, however he interprets them, will in any case not need to be assisted in his perception of the personal and particular emotions in which all was still anchored.
As I have said, the conception of the coming of mortal children in sleep to the gardens of Valinor was soon to be abandoned in its entirety, and in the developed mythology there would be no place for it—still less for the idea that in some possible future day ‘the roads through Arvalin to Valinor shall be thronged with the sons and daughters of Men’.
Likewise, all the ‘elfin’ diminutiveness soon disappeared. The idea of the Cottage of the Children was already in being in 1915, as the poem You and Me shows; and it was in the same year, indeed on the same days of April, that Goblin Feet (or Cumaю юб Ni1htielfas) was written, concerning which my father said in 1971: ‘I wish the unhappy little thing, representing all that I came (so soon after) to fervently dislike, could be buried for ever.’* Yet it is to be observed that in early notes Elves and Men are said to have been ‘of a size’ in former days, and the smallness (and filminess and transparency) of the ‘fairies’ is an aspect of their ‘fading’, and directly related to the domination of Men in the Great Lands. To this matter I shall return later. In this connection, the diminutiveness of the Cottage is very strange, since it seems to be a diminutiveness peculiar to itself: Eriol, who has travelled for many days through Tol Eressлa, is astonished that the dwelling can hold so many, and he is told that all who enter it must be, or must become, very small. But Tol Eressлa is an island inhabited by Elves.
I give now three texts of the poem Kortirion among the Trees (later The Trees of Kortirion). The very earliest workings (November 1915) of this poem are extant,† and there are many subsequent texts. The prose introduction to the early form has been cited on pp. 25–6. A major revision was made in 1937, and another much later; by this time it was almost a different poem. Since my father sent it to Rayner Unwin in February 1962 as a possible candidate for inclusion in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, it seems virtually certain that the final version dates from that time.‡