Fangorn & The Loss of the Old Woods
The ancient trees extend their limbs in creaking-whisper secrecy
As rustle-leaf and quiver-root absorb slow thoughts that lie unseen
Two for the trees - or really, for the Ents. The first is not only for Fangorn "Treebeard" himself, but for all of the Ents and the trees they shepherded. It is written in an Entish way with very long lines and multiple-descriptives.
With it is a much simpler couplet-style overview of the waning of the forests and of the Ents, their rising again in war and their loss in their dwindled numbers being beyond recovery.
Fangorn
The sleeping-waking forest waits beneath the meager warm-cold sun,
Remembered far and older than men’s kingdoms, ancient aged ones
Whose infant-sapling growing days are long-off tales of sapping-runs.
The ancient trees extend their limbs in creaking-whisper secrecy
As rustle-leaf and quiver-root absorb slow thoughts that lie unseen
For slowly-thinking always-steady ways shudder with taut unease
Under the mossy-boughs the air lies thick-still, never harboring
The enemy that bears an axe within their bounds, the trembling
Orc-axe-cutting, burning-hacking they never stop remembering.
Green-deep, thick-branch now they arise, arouse, raise up their leafed-crowns
To stir their stiffened bark-clad trunks, their fiery heart-sparks casting down
Their apathy and treeish-ways. Ents’ deeping-eyes aglow come round,
Clear-watching all their wayward trees as root-filled earth goes tumbling
In clods beneath their wrathful boughs, green-valley filled with rumbling
Of marching, marching towards the foe whose walls will soon be crumbling.
Hoom hum ba-room hum-a hoom-hum a hoom-hum: stone and rock will crack.
In the raging of Ents neglected long, rubble they shall not lack,
Boom hum boom hum water and wood: the trees are surely striking back.
-
The Loss of the Old Woods
Before this world knew half its tales
The Ents of Old walked in the wood;
The forest know no bounds nor end,
Up to the sea the woodlands stood.
How great the devastation then
Of grove and dell, of forest flock
When mariners came from afar
To bare the land down to the rock.
Their ships were mighty, tall and swift
The names they bore were filled with pride.
They hewed the trees and stacked the wood,
And built their cities near beside.
The Ents did watch the men afar,
The years went by, then ages too:
Men prospered through both peace and war,
The forest shrank and farmland grew.
The Ents grew sleepy, slow and sad;
Their trees grew wild, unwatched, unknown.
Their name fell into mist and myth
And all their ways were overgrown.
When darker times again arose
Their name a slip, mere fable old,
The Ents left out of plots and plans
Laid out by friend who now was foe.
Ah! What a stumble, Saruman!
Ah! What a blunder, woe to thee
That you should try to play at war
Without the blessing of the trees!
Awakened by a smallish folk,
From unknown lands they came to them.
Their sap was stirred, their leaf unfurled
And hasty was their Hoom-Hum-Hem!
Persuasive words showed them, in truth,
That there are times to be involved,
That bullies only know brute force;
Speak their language, breach their wall!
Soon unto Orthanc did they march
The Ents raised up in fearsome might -
Tore beam from beam and stone from stone
To rubble in one fearsome night.
They found their strength - and knew again
The longing for their missing wives,
Their number dwindled through the years.
Too few, too few remaining lives.
“If you see them, please let them know
We want them back, and entings too.
So long ago they went away…
Perhaps the Shire would have a few.”
Alas the loss of ancient trees,
Alas the Ent-wives gone astray!
Alas for all the wasted days;
And for the loss of all their ways.
-
As rustle-leaf and quiver-root absorb slow thoughts that lie unseen
Two for the trees - or really, for the Ents. The first is not only for Fangorn "Treebeard" himself, but for all of the Ents and the trees they shepherded. It is written in an Entish way with very long lines and multiple-descriptives.
With it is a much simpler couplet-style overview of the waning of the forests and of the Ents, their rising again in war and their loss in their dwindled numbers being beyond recovery.
Fangorn
The sleeping-waking forest waits beneath the meager warm-cold sun,
Remembered far and older than men’s kingdoms, ancient aged ones
Whose infant-sapling growing days are long-off tales of sapping-runs.
The ancient trees extend their limbs in creaking-whisper secrecy
As rustle-leaf and quiver-root absorb slow thoughts that lie unseen
For slowly-thinking always-steady ways shudder with taut unease
Under the mossy-boughs the air lies thick-still, never harboring
The enemy that bears an axe within their bounds, the trembling
Orc-axe-cutting, burning-hacking they never stop remembering.
Green-deep, thick-branch now they arise, arouse, raise up their leafed-crowns
To stir their stiffened bark-clad trunks, their fiery heart-sparks casting down
Their apathy and treeish-ways. Ents’ deeping-eyes aglow come round,
Clear-watching all their wayward trees as root-filled earth goes tumbling
In clods beneath their wrathful boughs, green-valley filled with rumbling
Of marching, marching towards the foe whose walls will soon be crumbling.
Hoom hum ba-room hum-a hoom-hum a hoom-hum: stone and rock will crack.
In the raging of Ents neglected long, rubble they shall not lack,
Boom hum boom hum water and wood: the trees are surely striking back.
-
The Loss of the Old Woods
Before this world knew half its tales
The Ents of Old walked in the wood;
The forest know no bounds nor end,
Up to the sea the woodlands stood.
How great the devastation then
Of grove and dell, of forest flock
When mariners came from afar
To bare the land down to the rock.
Their ships were mighty, tall and swift
The names they bore were filled with pride.
They hewed the trees and stacked the wood,
And built their cities near beside.
The Ents did watch the men afar,
The years went by, then ages too:
Men prospered through both peace and war,
The forest shrank and farmland grew.
The Ents grew sleepy, slow and sad;
Their trees grew wild, unwatched, unknown.
Their name fell into mist and myth
And all their ways were overgrown.
When darker times again arose
Their name a slip, mere fable old,
The Ents left out of plots and plans
Laid out by friend who now was foe.
Ah! What a stumble, Saruman!
Ah! What a blunder, woe to thee
That you should try to play at war
Without the blessing of the trees!
Awakened by a smallish folk,
From unknown lands they came to them.
Their sap was stirred, their leaf unfurled
And hasty was their Hoom-Hum-Hem!
Persuasive words showed them, in truth,
That there are times to be involved,
That bullies only know brute force;
Speak their language, breach their wall!
Soon unto Orthanc did they march
The Ents raised up in fearsome might -
Tore beam from beam and stone from stone
To rubble in one fearsome night.
They found their strength - and knew again
The longing for their missing wives,
Their number dwindled through the years.
Too few, too few remaining lives.
“If you see them, please let them know
We want them back, and entings too.
So long ago they went away…
Perhaps the Shire would have a few.”
Alas the loss of ancient trees,
Alas the Ent-wives gone astray!
Alas for all the wasted days;
And for the loss of all their ways.
-