The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun

by J.R.R. Tolkien

In Britain ways are wild and long, and woods are dark with danger strong; and sound of seas is in the leaves, and wonder walks the forest-eaves.

Sad is the note and sad the lay, but mirth we meet not every day.

his later version makes the lord’s childlessness the engine of his doom, his ‘mad and monstrous’ resolve to seek the fay a symptom of his darkening mind, and juxtaposes the physical allure of the fay against her ‘withered’ and ‘bony’ image in the lord’s dream.