This is the Season Dearest to the Heart

As I stated when I posted the first portion of Kortirion Among the Trees, there is another part that I like to read at Christmas time.  Again, I prefer the second version of this poem to the first or third.  In the third version of the poem, Tolkien refers to "The funeral candles of the Silver Wain" (meaning the Big Dipper) and I think that is a rather poor description of the night sky in winter, which is my favorite season.  But then, John could be quite a humbug when it came to winter.  And even Jack Lewis, who loved snow and Christmas almost as much as I do, turned into a real Scrooge while Joy was ill (as I saw this summer from some of his writings). But that is neither here nor there, and they are allowed to be that way.  Here is the winter part of the second draft of Kortirion Among the Trees, starting at line 85.

  This is the season dearest to the heart,
  And time most fitting to the ancient town,
  With waning musics sweet that slow depart
  Winding with echoed sadness faintly down
  The paths of stranded mist.  O gentle time,
  When the late mornings are begemmed with rime,
  And early shadows fold the distant woods!
  The Elves go silent by, their shining hair
  They cloak in twilight under secret hoods
  Of grey, and filmy purple, and long bands
  Of frosted starlight sewn by silver hands.

  And oft they dance beneath the roofless sky,
  When naked elms entwine in branching lace
  The Seven Stars, and through the boughs the eye
  Stares golden-beaming in the round moon's face.
  O holy Elves and fair immortal Folk,
  You sing then ancient songs that once awoke
  Under primeval stars before the Dawn;
  You whirl then dancing with the eddying wind,
  As once you danced upon the shimmering lawn
 ***
(Line 119)
The seven candles of the Silver Wain,
Like lighted tapers in a darkened fane,
Now flare above the fallen year.
Thought court and street now cold and empty lie,
And Elves dance seldom neath the barren sky,
Yet under the white moon there is a sound
Of buried music still beneath the ground.
When winter comes, I would meet winter here.

Quoted from The Book of Lost Tales, pages 38 and 39.