Comments

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Lovely poem! I can imagine this as a part of a Numenorean history.

(Completely spurious question: how did you get the format to work? I can't seem to get even simple line-spacing right, even with HTML, and as for indentation *shudders*. I'm curious as to how you've managed to fix the formatting, and completely in awe of your skils!)

*Applauds* 

This is fantastic, DW!  I can "hear" the Middle-earth equivalent of a skäld reciting these verses, and the entirety of the poem is very immersive, eliciting that frisson when you feel like you've entered another time and place, e.g., in a smoky hall of the Men of Westernesse in the Angle, for example, during their waning years in the Third Age. Hence, very Tolkienian!

 

Thank you, Pandë!  I'm so glad it works--that was exactly my intention!  In my framework of "Sam's Book of Tales", he collected it either in Rohan, as a tale brought south, and handed down, or in some little village he passed through during his travels.

It certainly did not appear the way the bards of old are said to have composed, extemporaneously, but little by little, a couple words at a time over several months.  So that part was not very Tolkien-like, as he seems to have been much more like those old bards in his abilities!  I'm thinking of his "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorthelm's Son" (for example), the short play in alliterative verse, which he apparently just dashed off!

This came out wonderfully well. I'm not familiar with this poetic format but it looks and sounds great, and that could not have been an easy task to accomplish. I'm a sucker for dragon stories and I could picture this ancient dragon collecting and guarding her treasure over time too vast to comprehend, then having to start all over again. I especially like the last line that she might still be out there somewhere sleeping on her hoard, ready to rise again to protect it.

Oh gosh, Bard, I just now noticed your review!

Thanks so much!  You are right, I found this difficult and time-consuming.  Although I am fairly pleased with the result (except I wish it were longer!), I think I'll stick with prose, and maybe a little rhyming verse.

I have wanted to add a dragon story for the longest time (I love dragons too, as you know), and this style seemed perfectly apt for one.  Also, I didn't want to make her an out-and-out villain, but for her to maaaaybe still be hibernating with her treasure in some remote snowy mountain.

So glad you liked it!