Songs for the Seasons by losselen

The kingfisher's wing
Aegnor for Andreth, who is said to have loved her

After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.

- "Burnt Norton"

A silent hour it must be, Andreth, when you fly from the limits of the world. In that hour, where will I be, I who cannot leave its bounds? My heart misgives, thinking of the battle ahead. Long ago I saw you by the clear waters of Tarn Aeluin, the loose waves of your hair flowing in the dark, complex air. Beside you the summer starlings gathered against the falling night. The brightness of your words warmed me, and I first loved you then.

And now, lastly come, your words still warm me. And I love you still, though your body - unbound to your soul - will not hold you forever. Though you once told me that to age is to lose everything.

Nay, lady. I think it is not so.

For we Quendi are bound in the orbs of this infinite-seeming Time, tied as a hare is to the meadow that made him, ever returning to its substance. But Andreth, lo! Where this earth and time ends, that is where you go. The confines of this world are not made for you; they are but the temporary vale where the light of your summer must linger for a season. Despair not, my lady. At the still point of the the turning world it shall find a music less sorrowed.

Late November
Elrond for Arwen, after he sailed for the West

I.

Once you walked among the flowers. Once in your walking you named them. The primrose, the fritillary-- in the spring they lilted. Summer followed and thistles bowed in the rufous heat. Then wild anemones, in late November, flowed their petals into the loud-syllabled Bruinen, until snowdrops dotted all the banks in a new spring, and we counted our seasons by our flowers. So I remember you, walking in the valley, glad and warm in the flying light.

II.

My daughter, I see you still. In the wide night among the immortal woods, when a memoried wind comes from the east. I find you seated, pensive in a glade, where blooms of elanor rock in the windfall light, and the wildgrass furrows in the undying breeze.

And then the pale stars will shiver in their high places, hesitating in the locks of your hair, and you stand, and you turn to me, and I remember that you came not to these lands.

III.

In my heart I see the falls of Imladris shimmering in the autumn. Where do you walk now? For once you walked in the eaves of time, in the silvered lines of his eyes. For once you and he, both my children, walked and laughed with each other, in the fields of memory.

The tolling bell
Arwen for Aragorn, at the hour of his death

The tolling bell
Measures time not our time, rung by the unhurried
Ground swell, a time
Older than the time of chronometers

- "The Dry Salvages"

I.

The bells have the voices of the sea, even and calm. They ring out the deep, unmarked intervals that rive each moment from the last, and fork the future, and set our doom. Tonight the fresh air comes not to the citadel. The stars are over-bright with grief, and the wind scatters on my ears the mathematical tolling of the bell. I cannot find in me the will of movement. Let the pale, unstrung measures of time wash against me, let them come, stroke against stroke, fading among the walls.

II.

This is the hour. The hour between the Moon and the Sun: timeless and moveless. The future is neither before nor behind me, perching on the unthinkable threshold.

In the wide meadows of Imladris I remember first meeting you: the light stole upon your face, and you were flushed and amazed. In the land that was Lórien, our memories walk unsundered still. What sweetness did mark the spaces and the hours, these short years when you and I stood still, beside each other? Lo! We have gathered and spent.

III.

Remembering my many debates with my father I am reminded of Finrod and the mortal woman Andreth, and their conversations. I long thought on it, the gift that is the fëa of men-- that lives not long in its hröa, yet will endure beyond the reaches of the world. Gift, and doom. In my bitterest thoughts I thought it a cureless eternity, flying from grief to unknown grief.

But may it not be so! Estel was your name, and estel in me is unchanged. Ere all my hours are spent it will not change still. My soul is bound to yours. You have pulled me from my fate, across a Sea, athwart the graces of time.

The bell still rings. Each toll like a steady and deep longing.

IV.

The sea's edges mark upon the shoals, and the soil and the water dissolve; so do the bodies of all lovers, all fathers, all children, dissolve in the same way in the soils and the waters of the world. And their bodies have no boundaries. And their souls are dissolved in each other.

Midwinter spring
Daeron for Lúthien, forsaking Doriath, searching for her in Eriador

Once you danced. In Doriath you danced alone. You stood in the frosted valley and all around you bloomed. The gold-leafed autumn lived with the fresh spring, contour in contour, in your steps. The inveterate morning travelled in your grace. In Doriath you danced to my song, and like the niphredil my words sprang from the earth, limpid and sweet, blooming from the mind like a breath. They danced in me, visions of your flashing limbs among the hemlock leaves. Translucent, and vast. In Doriath that is lost beyond the mountains.

But now the light fractures in my words. The stars are cold and broken. The dawn laps on barren lands and eats the greenness from the grass. And neither high nor infinite is my soul, that looks for you everywhere. But nowhere are you. O Lúthien! I remember so much. When in midwinter the wind moans in the peaks and wallows in the plains I can almost hear in its sound the sweet notes of spring. O Lúthien. Such is the false spring of your memories.