A Sense of History: Straight Road
The next in a series of articles about ships passing to and from the West, Simon uses "The Fall of Númenor" to attempt to arrive at Tolkien's reading of the exordium to "Beowulf."
he northern lights are dancing in the quiet night, a path of the dead moving to the west, for rest, for penance, for rebirth. This is a silent land, filled of melancholy.
Here lies the shell of a the great dragon, huge ivory bones rising from glittering snow and ice. An eyeless skull buried deep under a mountain of ice. Hoarfrost decorates the bones in silver patterns, gleaming in the faint starlight.
A battle was fought once, in the sky, above this place - and the dragon fell, lost. A beautiful creation smashed upon the ground, now only the bones remain.