The Lord Of The Rings: One Volume

by J.R.R. Tolkien

going to be presents, mark you, presents for all – this very month as is.’ That very month was September, and as fine

Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.’

Why did it come to me? Why was I chosen?’ ‘Such questions cannot be answered,’ said Gandalf. ‘You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom, at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.’

‘The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves. Tom Bombadil is the Master.

As they prepared for sleep in the inn at Bree, darkness lay on Buckland; a mist strayed in the dells and along the river-bank. The house at Crickhollow stood silent. Fatty Bolger opened the door cautiously

of it I heard a voice, remote but clear, crying: Seek for the Sword that was broken: In Imladris it dwells; There

halter on his neck, gagged, until

that

world that have

‘Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him.

‘The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and

though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.

In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!’

‘Against delay. Against the way that seems easier. Against refusal of the burden that is laid on me. Against – well, if it must be said, against trust in the strength and truth of Men.’

Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?’ ‘A man may do both,’ said Aragorn.

‘There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark.

Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language,

There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Men bad enough for such treachery.

But let them march now and sing! We have a long way to go, and there is time ahead for thought. It is something to have started.’

But there, my friends, songs like trees bear fruit only in their own time and their own way: and sometimes they are withered untimely.’

For I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to; the long explanations needed by the young are wearying.’

Have patience. Go where you must go, and hope!

‘Is it so long since you listened to tales by the fireside? There are children in your land who, out of the twisted threads of story, could pick the answer to your question.

And now the songs have come down among us out of strange places, and walk visible under the Sun.’

but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend:

the praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards.

adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same – like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?’

And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any one that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know.

and

Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

Though we should still have enough to do without them: the world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.’

It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.