And slowly thither many years have gone,

Since first the Elves here built Kortirion.

O climbing town upon thy windy hill

With winding streets, and alleys shady-walled Where now untamed the peacocks pace in drill

15

Majestic, sapphirine, and emerald; Amid the girdle of this sleeping land,

Where silver falls the rain and gleaming stand

The whispering host of old deep-rooted trees That cast long shadows in many a bygone noon,

20

And murmured many centuries in the breeze; Thou art the city of the Land of Elms,

Alalminуrл in the Faery Realms.

Sing of thy trees, Kortirion, again:

The beech on hill, the willow in the fen,

25

The rainy poplars, and the frowning yews

Within thine agйd courts that muse

In sombre splendour all the day; Until the twinkle of the early stars

Comes glinting through their sable bars,

30

And the white moon climbing up the sky

Looks down upon the ghosts of trees that die

Slowly and silently from day to day. O Lonely Isle, here was thy citadel,

Ere bannered summer from his fortress fell.

35

Then full of music were thine elms:

Green was their armour, green their helms,

The Lords and Kings of all thy trees. Sing, then, of elms, renowned Kortirion,

That under summer crowd their full sail on,

40

And shrouded stand like masts of verdurous ships,

A fleet of galleons that proudly slips

Across long sunlit seas.II

Thou art the inmost province of the fading isle,

Where linger 1yet the Lonely Companies;45

Still, undespairing, here they slowly file

Along thy paths with solemn harmonies: The holy people of an elder day,

Immortal Elves, that singing fair and fey

Of vanished things that were, and could be yet,50

Pass like a wind among the rustling trees,

A wave of bowing grass, and we forget Their tender voices like wind-shaken bells

Of flowers, their gleaming hair like golden asphodels.

Once Spring was here with joy, and all was fair

55

Among the trees; but Summer drowsing by the stream Heard trembling in her heart the secret player

Pipe, out beyond the tangle of her forest dream, The long-drawn tune that elvish voices made

Foreseeing Winter through the leafy glade;

60

The late flowers nodding on the ruined walls Then stooping heard afar that haunting flute

Beyond the sunny aisles and tree-propped halls; For thin and clear and cold the note,

As strand of silver glass remote.

65

Then all thy trees, Kortirion, were bent,

And shook with sudden whispering lament:

For passing were the days, and doomed the nights

When flitting ghost-moths danced as satellites

Round tapers in the moveless air;70

And doomed already were the radiant dawns,

The fingered sunlight drawn across the lawns;

The odour and the slumbrous noise of meads,

Where all the sorrel, flowers, and plumйd weeds

Go down before the scyther’s share.75

When cool October robed her dewy furze

In netted sheen of gold-shot gossamers,

Then the wide-umbraged elms began to fail;

Their mourning multitude of leaves grew pale,

Seeing afar the icy spears80

Of Winter marching blue behind the sun

Of bright All-Hallows. Then their hour was done,

And wanly borne on wings of amber pale

They beat the wide airs of the fading vale,

And flew like birds across the misty meres.

III

85

This is the season dearest to the heart,

And time most fitting to the ancient town, With waning musics sweet that slow depart

Winding with echoed sadness faintly down The paths of stranded mist. O gentle time,

90

When the late mornings are begemmed with rime,

And early shadows fold the distant woods! The Elves go silent by, their shining hair

They cloak in twilight under secret hoods Of grey, and filmy purple, and long bands

95

Of frosted starlight sewn by silver hands.

And oft they dance beneath the roofless sky,

When naked elms entwine in branching lace The Seven Stars, and through the boughs the eye

Stares golden-beaming in the round moon’s face.100

O holy Elves and fair immortal Folk,

You sing then ancient songs that once awoke

Under primeval stars before the Dawn; You whirl then dancing with the eddying wind,

As once you danced upon the shimmering lawn105

In Elvenhome, before we were, before

You crossed wide seas unto this mortal shore.

Now are thy trees, old grey Kortirion,

Through pallid mists seen rising tall and wan,

Like vessels floating vague, and drifting far

110

Down opal seas beyond the shadowy bar

Of cloudy ports forlorn; Leaving behind for ever havens loud,

Wherein their crews a while held feasting proud

And lordly ease, they now like windy ghosts

115

Are wafted by slow airs to windy coasts,

And glimmering sadly down the tide are borne. Bare are thy trees become, Kortirion;

The rotted raiment from their bones is gone.

The seven candles of the Silver Wain,

120

Like lighted tapers in a darkened fane,

Now flare above the fallen year. Though court and street now cold and empty lie,

And Elves dance seldom neath the barren sky,

Yet under the white moon there is a sound

125

Of buried music still beneath the ground.

When winter comes, I would meet winter here.

I would not seek the desert, or red palaces

Where reigns the sun, nor sail to magic isles, Nor climb the hoary mountains’ stony terraces;

130

And tolling faintly over windy miles To my heart calls no distant bell that rings

In crowded cities of the Earthly Kings.

For here is heartsease still, and deep content, Though sadness haunt the Land of withered Elms

1135

(Alalminуrл in the Faery Realms);

And making music still in sweet lament The Elves here holy and immortal dwell,

And on the stones and trees there lies a spell.

I give lastly the final poem, in the second of two slightly different versions; composed (as I believe) nearly half a century after the first.

The Trees of Kortirion

I

Alalmin у r л

O ancient city on a leaguered hill!

Old shadows linger in your broken gate, Your stones are grey, your old halls now are still,

Your towers silent in the mist await5

Their crumbling end, while through the storeyed elms

The River Gliding leaves these inland realms

And slips between long meadows to the Sea, Still bearing down by weir and murmuring fall

One day and then another to the Sea;10

And slowly thither many days have gone

Since first the Edain built Kortirion.

Kortirion! Upon your island hill

With winding streets, and alleys shadow-walled Where even now the peacocks pace in drill

15

Majestic, sapphirine and emerald, Once long ago amid this sleeping land

Of silver rain, where still year-laden stand

In unforgetful earth the rooted trees That cast long shadows in the bygone noon,

20

And whispered in the swiftly passing breeze, Once long ago, Queen of the Land of Elms,

High City were you of the Inland Realms.

Your trees in summer you remember still:

The willow by the spring, the beech on hill;