Transcribed from the 1904 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by DavidPrice, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Whiles in the early Winter eve
We pass amid the gathering night
Some homestead that we had to leave
Years past; and see its candles bright
Shine in the room beside the door
Where we were merry years agone
But now must never enter more,
As still the dark road drives us on.
E’en so the world of men may turn
At even of some hurried day
And see the ancient glimmer burn
Across the waste that hath no way;
Then with that faint light in its eyes
A while I bid it linger near
And nurse in wavering memories
The bitter-sweet of days that were.
The tale tells that in times long past there was a dwelling of menbeside a great wood. Before it lay a plain, not very great, butwhich was, as it were, an isle in the sea of woodland, since even whenyou stood on the flat ground, you could see trees everywhere in theoffing, though as for hills, you could scarce say that there were any;only swellings-up of the earth here and there, like the upheavings ofthe water that one sees at whiles going on amidst the eddies of a swiftbut deep stream.
On either side, to right and left the tree-girdle reached out towardthe blue distance, thick close and unsundered, save where it and theplain which it begirdled was cleft amidmost by a river about as wideas the Thames at Sheene when the flood-tide is at its highest, but soswift and full of eddies, that it gave token of mountains not so fardistant, though they were hidden. On each side moreover of thestream of this river was a wide space of stones, great and little, andin most places above this stony waste were banks of a few feet high,showing where the yearly winter flood was most commonly stayed.
You must know that this great clearing in the woodland was not amatter of haphazard; though the river had driven a road whereby menmight fare on each side of its hurrying stream. It was men whohad made that Isle in the woodland.
For many generations the folk that now dwelt there had learned thecraft of iron-founding, so that they had no lack of wares of iron andsteel, whether they were tools of handicraft or weapons for huntingand for war. It was the men of the Folk, who coming adown by theriver-side had made that clearing. The tale tells not whence theycame, but belike from the dales of the distant mountains, and from dalesand mountains and plains further aloof and yet further.
Anyhow they came adown the river; on its waters on rafts, by itsshores in wains or bestriding their horses or their kine, or afoot,till they had a mind to abide; and there as it fell they stayed theirtravel, and spread from each side of the river, and fought with thewood and its wild things, that they might make to themselves a dwelling-placeon the face of the earth.
So they cut down the trees, and burned their stumps that the grassmight grow sweet for their kine and sheep and horses; and they dikedthe river where need was all through the plain, and far up into thewild-wood to bridle the winter floods: and they made them boats to ferrythem over, and to float down stream and track up-stream: they fishedthe river’s eddies also with net and with line; and drew driftfrom out of it of far-travelled wood and other matters; and the gravelof its shallows they washed for gold; and it became their friend, andthey loved it, and gave it a name, and called it the Dusky, and theGlassy, and the Mirkwood-water; for the names of it changed with thegenerations of