Bilbo's song

There was a time when a poet wasn't considered less of a man and when folks longed to hear the latest poetry. Not so much anymore. Oh, we'll still listen to a poem if it's cranking through our iPod, but even then, it's the hook and the music that grabs our attention more than the lyric. Do you remember the last song that really made you think and wonder?

In an era when movies reside at our fingertips and video games can be played with friends around the country (and the world), who wants to hear a poem? Our kids bounce from game to game and noise to noise in a sea of constant audio and visual stimulation. How many children read? We're stunting their imaginations. There's little we can do for our kids of greater value than reading good stories to our kids and demanding that they use their minds to consider the words.

In the midst of my reading The Fellowship of the Ring to my daughters, I came across one of Bilbo's poems, one he recited before the Fellowship departed from Rivendell from the melancholy of his heart, and it touched me. In the midst of my middle age, the poem picked at my heart strings. Who was this J. R. R. Tolkien who could create lands and creatures in vivid prose and yet craft such poignant poems that don't distract from the tale but add startling and unexpected hues, who in the middle of a story about good and evil, halflings and Ringwraiths, could insert a poem that would bless a near-fifty year old man in north Texas?

For my friends who are fast approaching or have recently broached their fiftieth year, I offer you this poem by Bilbo Baggins from The Fellowship of the Ring.  Enjoy.

I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood and every spring
there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.