Tolkien Quotes: Nor Bid the Stars Farewell

At last, weary and feeling finally defeated, he sat on a step below of the level of the passage-floor and bowed his head into his hands. It was quiet, horribly quiet. The torch, that was already burning low when he arrived, sputtered and went out; and he felt the darkness cover him like a tide. And then softly, to his own surprise, there at the vain end of his long journey and his grief, moved by what thought in his heart he could not tell, Sam began to sing…

      In western lands beneath the Sun

the flowers may rise in Spring,

the trees may bud, the waters run,

the merry finches sing.

Or there maybe ‘tis cloudless night

and swaying beeches bear

the Elven-stars as jewels white

amid their branching hair.

      Though here at journey’s end I lie

in darkness buried deep,

beyond all towers strong and high,

beyond all mountains steep,

above all shadows rides the Sun

and Stars for ever dwell:

I will not say the Day is done,

nor bid the Stars farewell.

I sat on an armchair in the grand sitting-room of a Victorian mansion-turned-hostel in Sacramento. As I iced my sprained knee, I read a paperback version of The Return of the King. Tomorrow I would head back to Missouri after spending nearly a month in California. I had been traveling solo for a good two weeks, wavering in and out of depression and sadness and fear and bitterness. I felt as lonely as Sam searching for his master, and I knew in my heart that I would never see my Frodo again. 

When I read this passage, I looked around to make sure no one else was in the common room, and then I allowed myself to cry. I felt beauty warming the edges of my cracked and brittle heart. I closed my eyes and spoke the words softly to myself. I will not say the Day is done, nor bid the Stars farewell. Hope at the end of despair. Joy in the midst of grief. These themes echo over and over in Frodo and Sam’s journey through Mordor, and they reached into my heart in a way that nothing else could at that point in my life.

A year and a half later, I curled up on a futon-bed in a rickety trailer in Portland Oregon. Four of my friends, three of them newfound, lounged on the beds and couches around me as one of them handed me a book of Tolkien poetry set to music. I couldn’t sight-read well enough to sing them, but I flipped through the pages until I found that poem. My favorite poem. The poem that has become my anthem of hope. With a full heart I began reading, tasting each word on my tongue. At this joyful point in my life, the poem was still just as beautiful and powerful. It will always be a meaningful passage to me, a reminder that, no matter how dark things get, there is always hope.

~Lisa Shafter