Tolkien's poetry is extremely varied, including both the poems and songs of Middle-earth, and other verses written throughout his life. J. R. R. Tolkien embedded over 60 poems in the text of The Lord of the Rings; there are others in The Hobbit and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil; and many more in his Middle-earth legendarium and other manuscripts which remained unpublished in his lifetime, some of book length. Some 240 poems, depending on how they are counted, are in his Collected Poems, but that total excludes many of the poems embedded in his novels. Some are translations; others imitate different styles of medieval verse, including the elegiac, while others again are humorous or nonsensical. He stated that the poems embedded in his novels all had a dramatic purpose, supporting the narrative. The poems are variously in modern English, Old English, Gothic, and Tolkien's constructed languages, especially his Elvish languages, Quenya and Sindarin.
Tolkien's poetry has long been overlooked, and has almost never been emulated by other fantasy writers. Readers often skip over the poems in The Lord of the Rings, thinking them an unwelcome distraction. Since the 1990s, Tolkien's poetry has received increased scholarly attention. Analysis shows that it is both varied and of high technical skill, making use of different metres and rarely used poetic devices to achieve its effects. All the poems in The Lord of the Rings were set to music between 1997 and 2005 by The Tolkien Ensemble.
Context
J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was a scholar of English literature at the University of Oxford. He was a philologist interested in language and poetry from the Middle Ages, especially that of Anglo-Saxon England and Northern Europe. His professional knowledge of poetical works such as Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shaped his fictional world of Middle-earth. His intention to create what has been called "a mythology for England" led him to construct not only stories but a fully formed world with its own languages, peoples, cultures, and history. He is best known for writing the fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings.
Middle-earth
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings contains at least 61 poems, perhaps as many as 75 if variations and Tom Bombadil's sung speeches are included. The verses include songs of many genres: for wandering, marching to war, drinking, and having a bath; narrating ancient myths, riddles, prophecies, and magical incantations; of praise and lament (elegy); some of these are found in Old English poetry.
Several Tolkien scholars have commented on Tolkien's poetry. Michael Drout wrote that most of his students admitted to skipping the poems when reading The Lord of the Rings, something that Tolkien was aware of. Andrew Higgins wrote that Drout had made a "compelling case" for studying it. The poetry was, Drout wrote, essential for the fiction to work aesthetically and thematically; it added information not given in the prose; and it brought out characters and their backgrounds. Thomas Kullmann and Dirk Siepmann note that all the poems follow in traditional genres, such as Old English charms, elegies, and riddles; Middle English nature songs; or English folklore songs for the nursery, the church, the tavern, the barrack room, festivals, or for activities such as walking. They comment that many of these poems are far from conventional lyrical poetry such as that of Wordsworth or Keats, since evoking "the poet's personal feelings" was not Tolkien's intention. Tolkien indeed wrote in a letter that
+ Thomas Kullmann's analysis of song genres in The Lord of the Rings Song genre Occurs in Old English Example Adapted to context Walking songs — "The Road goes ever on and on""Upon the hearth the fire is red" Frodo goes walking, beginning a long and unknown quest Marching songs — "We come, we come with roll of drum" The Ents go to war, knowing that doom, very likely their own, is approaching Drinking songs — "Ho! Ho! Ho! To the Bottle I Go" The hobbits relax after frightening encounters with Black Riders in the Shire Bathing songs — "Sing hey! for the bath at close of day" The hobbits take a bath after escaping the perils of The Old Forest Narrating ancient myths E.g. "The Fight at Finnsburg" in BeowulfBeowulf, 1069–1159 "An Elven-maid there was of old" In Lothlórien, as the companions recover from the loss of Gandalf, Legolas the Elf sings of times long ago Riddles E.g. in the Exeter Book "Ere iron was found or tree was hewn" Gandalf hints to Théoden of the Ents he is about to meet Prophecies — "Seek for the Sword that was broken" Aragorn and the One Ring are introduced at The Council of Elrond Magical incantations E.g. in Lacnunga ("Remedies") "against Water-Elf Disease" "Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky" Gandalf tells Frodo the nature of the ring he has been given Songs of praise — "Long live the Halflings! Praise them with great praise!" The Men of Gondor shout praise to Frodo and Sam for destroying the Ring Elegies E.g. Scyld Scefing's funeral in BeowulfBeowulf, 2:36b–2:42 "Beneath Amon Hen I heard his cry" Boromir's friends and travelling-companions give him a boat-burial
The scholar of humanities Brian Rosebury agrees that the distinctive thing about Tolkien's verse is its "individuation of poetic styles to suit the expressive needs of a given character or narrative moment". Diane Marchesani, in Mythlore, considers the songs in The Lord of the Rings as "the folklore of Middle-earth", calling them "an integral part of the narrative". She distinguishes four kinds of folklore: lore, including rhymes of lore, spells, and prophecies; ballads, from the Elvish "Tale of Tinuviel" to "The Ent and the Entwife" with its traditional question-answer format; ballad-style, simpler verse such as the hobbits' walking-songs; and nonsense, from "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late" to Pippin's "Bath Song". In each case, she states, the verse is "indispensable" to the narrative, revealing both the characters involved and the traditions of their race.
The poetry of the Shire is, in Tom Shippey's words, "plain, simple, straightforward in theme and expression", verse suitable for hobbits, but which varies continuously to suit changing situations and growing characters. Bilbo's Old Walking Song, "The Road goes ever on and on / Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet..." is placed at the start of The Lord of the Rings. It reappears, sung by Frodo, varied with "weary feet" to suit his mood, shortly before he sees a Ringwraith; and a third time, at the end of the book, by a much aged, sleepy, forgetful, dying Bilbo in Rivendell, when the poem has shifted register to "But I at last with weary feet / Will turn towards the lighted inn, My evening-rest and sleep to meet". Shippey observes that the reader can see that the subject is now death. Frodo, too, leaves Middle-earth, but with a different walking-song, singing of "A day will come at last when I / Shall take the hidden paths that run / West of the Moon, East of the Sun", which Shippey glosses as the "Lost Straight Road" that goes out of the round world, straight to Elvenhome.
In contrast to the hobbits, Tom Bombadil only speaks in metre. The Tolkien scholar David Dettmann writes that Tom Bombadil's guests find that song and speech run together in his house; they realise they are all "singing merrily, as if it was easier and more natural than talking". Such signals are, Forest-Hill asserts, cues to the reader to look for Tolkien's theories of "creativity, identity, and meaning".
Shippey states that in The Lord of the Rings, poetry in the metre of Old English verse is used to give a direct impression of the oral tradition of the Riders of Rohan; Tolkien's "Where now the horse and the rider?" echoes the Old English poem The Wanderer, while "Arise now, arise, Riders of Theoden" is based on the Finnesburg Fragment. In Shippey's opinion, these poems are about memory "of the barbarian past", and the fragility of oral tradition makes what is remembered specially valuable. As fiction, he writes, Tolkien's "imaginative re-creation of the past adds to it an unusual emotional depth." Some of the poems are in alliterative verse, recreating the feeling of Old English poetry, with its use of rhythm and alliteration. Among these are Aragorn's lament for Boromir, which recalls Scyld Scefing's ship-burial in Beowulf. In Shippey's view, the three epitaph poems in The Lord of the Rings, including "The Mounds of Mundburg" and, based on the famous Ubi sunt? passage in The Wanderer, Tolkien's "Lament of the Rohirrim", represent Tolkien's finest alliterative Modern English verse.
The Hobbit
The Hobbit contains over a dozen poems, many of which are frivolous, but some—like the dwarves' ballad in the first chapter, which is continued or adapted in later chapters—show how poetry and narrative can be combined.
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, published in 1962, contains 16 poems including some such as "The Stone Troll" and "Oliphaunt" that also appear in The Lord of the Rings. The first two poems in the collection concern Tom Bombadil, a character described in The Fellowship of the Ring, while "The Sea-Bell" or "Frodos Dreme" was considered by the poet W. H. Auden to be Tolkien's "finest" poetic work.
The Silmarillion
The Silmarillion as edited and constructed by Christopher Tolkien does not contain explicitly identified poetry, but Gergely Nagy notes that the prose hints repeatedly at the style of Beleriand's "lost" poetry. The work's varied prose styles imply to Nagy that it is meant to represent a compendium, in Christopher Tolkien's words, "made long afterwards from sources of great diversity (poems, and annals, and oral tales)". Nagy infers from verse-like fragments in the text that the poetry of Beleriand used alliteration, rhyme, and rhythm including possibly iambics.
The Lays of Beleriand
Tolkien's legendarium, the mass of Middle-earth manuscripts that he left unpublished, contain several long heroic lays, edited by his son Christopher in The Lays of Beleriand. These include the tale of the tragic figure of Túrin Turambar in 2276 lines of verse, The Lay of the Children of Húrin, and the Tale of Beren and Lúthien in some 4200 lines of rhyming couplets, The Lay of Leithian. The fantasy novelist Suzannah Rowntree wrote that The Lays of Beleriand was a favourite of hers. In her view, "the book's main attraction is Part III, 'The Lay of Leithian'". She describes this as "a red-blooded, grand poem, written in a richly ornamented style bordering (in places) on the baroque. At worst this seems a little clumsy; at best it fits the lavish, heroic story and setting." She comments that C. S. Lewis "obviously enjoyed the poem hugely," going so far as to invent scholars Peabody and Pumpernickel who comment on what Lewis pretends is an ancient text.
Long poems on medieval subjects
The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son is a play, reworking the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, written in alliterative verse. It represents what critics agree is a biting critique of the heroic ethos, castigating Beorhtnoth's foolish pride.
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún contains two long poems, "The New Lay of the Völsungs" and "The New Lay of Gudrun", both inspired by the legend of Sigurd and the fall of the Niflungs in Norse mythology. Both poems are in a form of alliterative verse inspired by the medieval verse of the Poetic Edda.