Being that I had way more quotes than would comfortably fit in a little review post, for those who didn't get enough of Tolkien, here are some more that I wanted to share.
The westward road seems easiest. Therefore it must be shunned. It will be watched. Too often the Elves have fled that way. Now at this last we must take a hard road, a road unforeseen.
They kept as close as they could to the western side, and they could see the dim shapes of the low cliffs rising ever higher, shadowy walls with their feet in the hurrying river.
When his eyes were in turn uncovered, Frodo looked up and caught his breath. They were standing in an open space. To the left stood a great mound, covered with a sward of grass as green as Springtime in the Elder Days. Upon it, as a double crown, grew two circles of trees: the outer had a bark of snowy white, and were leafless but beautiful in their shapely nakedness; the inner were mallory-trees of great height, still arrayed in pale gold. High amid the branches of a towering tree that stood in the centre of all there gleamed a white felt. At the feet of the trees, and all about the green hillsides the grass was studded with small golden flower shaped like stars. Among them, nodding on slender stalks, were other flowers, white and palest green: they glimmered as a mist amid the rich hue of the grass. Over all the sky was blue, and the sun of afternoon glowed upon the hill and cast long green shadows beneath the trees. (When I first read the book (around age 10), I found this bit of description boring and overlong. Now I think it's beautiful.)
No trees grew there and it was open to the sky; stars were shining already in lakes between shores of cloud.
Understand one another? I fear I am beyond your comprehension. But you, Saruman, I understand now too well.
The great horse tossed his head. His flowing tail flicked in the moonlight. Then he leapt forward, spurning the earth, and was gone like the north wind from the mountains.
The skirts of the storm were lifting, ragged and wet, and the main battle had passed to spread its great wings over the Emyn Muil, upon which the dark thought of Sauron brooded for a while.
For a while they stood there, like men on the edge of a sleep where nightmare lurks, holding it off, though they know that they can only come to morning through the shadows. The light broadened and hardened. The gasping pits and poisonous mounds grew hideously clear. The sun was up, walking among clouds and long flags of smoke, but even the sunlight was defiled. The hobbits had no welcome for that light; unfriendly it seemed, revealing them in their helplessness — little squeaking ghosts that wandered among the ash-heaps of the Dark Lord.
[of Galadriel, Sam said:] Hard as di'monds, soft as moonlight. Warm as sunlight, cold as frost in the stars. Proud and far-off as a snow-mountain, and as merry as any lass I ever saw with daisies in her hair in springtime.
Merry wished he was a tall Rider like Éomer and could blow a horn or something and go galloping to his rescue.
I love Tolkien's imagery. It's quite lovely.
ReplyDelete