Poetry in The Lord of the Rings

• 1. Over Sixty Poems in Prose

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  The Lord of the Rings contains over 60 poems and songs interspersed with its prose narrative. Some scholars count as many as 75 if variations and Tom Bombadil's sung speeches are included. This volume of verse was unconventional for a twentieth-century novel. Most readers skip these verses, yet they remain essential to the fiction's aesthetic and thematic success. The poems serve functions ranging from marching to war to having a bath. They narrate ancient myths, riddles, prophecies, and magical incantations. Praise and lament form another category within this diverse collection.

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• 2. Individuated Styles For Characters

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  Tolkien wrote distinct poetic styles to suit specific characters like hobbits, elves, and dwarves. Brian Rosebury notes that the poetry avoids conventional lyrical forms found in Wordsworth or Keats. Instead, it evokes the poet's personal feelings only when required by the character. Gollum speaks in a comic-funereal rhythm during his song about cold hard lands. The Marching Song of the Ents celebrates their awakening power. The hymns of the Elves and chants of the Dwarves reflect their cultural identities. Hobbits sing variously comic, ruminative, and joyful songs throughout their journey. Each style serves the expressive needs of the given character or narrative moment.

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• 3. Shire Poetry And Mythic Timelessness

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  Tom Shippey identifies a strand of Tolkien's verse as Shire-poetry suitable for hobbits. This plain, simple, straightforward verse relates immediate action to mythic timelessness. Bilbo sings an Old Walking Song at the start of the novel with eager feet. Frodo later re-sings the poem with weary feet before seeing a Ringwraith. An aged, dying Bilbo sings it again in Rivendell with a register shift toward death. The reader sees how the subject changes from walking to mortality while the melody remains familiar. Frodo leaves Middle-earth singing of hidden paths running west of the Moon. This technique connects the here-and-now story to a sense of eternal return.

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• 4. Nonsense Verse And Oral Tradition

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  Lynn Forest-Hill explores Tom Bombadil's constant metrical chattering filled with nonsense words. Hey dol! merry dol! ring a ding dillo! appears repeatedly in his dialogue. Rebecca Ankeny states that this nonsense indicates he is benign yet irrelevant to keeping the Ring safe. He controls his world with song despite appearing nonsensical. His guests find that song and speech run together in his house. They realize they are all singing merrily rather than talking. The hobbits forget their midday meal as they listen to stories of nature and local history. These signals cue readers to look for theories of creativity and identity within the text. Apparent silliness extends beyond Bombadil to include silly rhymes by the hobbits themselves.

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• 5. Untranslated Elvish Poetry

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  Tolkien uses an untranslated Sindarin poem when the hobbits reach Rivendell. A Elbereth Gilthoniel falls like clear jewels of blended word and melody upon the ears. Readers were not expected to know the literal meaning of the song at first. A translation appeared much later in the song-cycle The Road Goes Ever On. It begins O Elbereth who lit the stars. Shippey argues that Tolkien believed sounds of language gave specific pleasure perceived as beauty. He found Gothic, Finnish, and Welsh immediately beautiful. Untranslated elvish does work that English could not do alone. Readers take something important from a song in another language even if it escapes cerebral focus.

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• 6. Technical Metrical Variety

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  Scholars analyze the wide variety of metres used throughout the poems and songs. Tolkien nearly always avoided iambic pentameter common in his time. Some poems are unrhymed yet often alliterative imitating Old English verse. Others use irregular strophic rhyme or ballad stanza forms. Iambic tetrameter appears frequently while dactylic trimeter shows up less often. Paul Edwin Zimmer notes that Tom Bombadil's dialogue is built on amphibrachs and amphimacers. These obscure tools allow for ambiguous stresses and metrical tricks. Zimmer marks examples where Tolkien mimics galloping horses with dactyls and wolves with spondees. The poet controls both simple and complex metres well within his fiction.

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• 7. Musical Adaptations And Recordings

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  Seven of Tolkien's songs became a song-cycle called The Road Goes Ever On set to music by Donald Swann in 1967. A Danish group named The Tolkien Ensemble founded in 1995 set all poetry to music. They published four CDs between 1997 and 2005 with approval from the Tolkien family. Drawings by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark illustrated these recordings. Critics received the settings well despite some initial mixed reception regarding the verse itself. Peter Jackson's film series performed few of Tolkien's songs directly. Aragorn sings lines of the Lay of Lúthien in Elvish during one scene. Bofur sings The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late in an extended edition of The Hobbit. Bilbo's Last Song was added to later editions of the song-cycle.

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