Kortirion Among the Trees

The following is the excerpt of a poem penned by J.R.R. Tolkien titled Kortirion among the trees. I prefer the second version.  The first version is a but rough, but that is to be expected. I do not know why he wrote a third version, the second, in my opinion, is perfect.  The third version, while better polished, is far more depressing.  but then, that was Reuel all over. Here is a beautiful description about the coming of Autumn, and I always read it when I sense the first breath of autumn in the air, which I did earlier this week. Another part of this poem, which begins "This is the season dearest ti the heart" is a matchless description of winter, and I always read it at Christmas.

Kortirion Among the Trees (beginning at line 53)

Once Spring was here with joy, and all was fair
Among the trees; but Summer drowsing by the stream
Heard trembling in her heart the secret player
Pipe, out beyond the tangle of her forest dream,
The long-drawn tune that elvish voices made
Foreseeing Winter through the leafy glade;
The late flowers nodding on the ruined walls
Then stooping heard afar that haunting flute
Beyond the sunny aisles and tree-propped halls;
For thin and clear and cold the note,
As strand of silver glass remote.

Then all thy trees Kortirion, were bent,
And shook with sudden whispering lament:
For passing were the days, and doomed the nights
When flitting ghost-moths danced as satellites
Round tapers in the moveless air;
And doomed already were the radiant dawns,
The fingered sunlight drawn across the lawns;
The odour and the slumbrous noise of meads,

Where all the sorrel, flowers and pluméd weeds

Go down before the scyther's share.
When cool October robed her dewy furze
In netted sheen of gold-shot gossamers,
Then the wide-umbraged elms began to fail;
Their mourning multitude of leaves grew pale,
Seeing afar the icy spears
Of Winter marching blue behind the sun
Of bright All-Hallows.  Then their hour was done,
And wanly borne on wings of amber pale
They beat the wide airs of the fading vale,
And flew like birds across the misty meres.