The poetry in The Lord of the Rings consists of the poems and songs written by J. R. R. Tolkien, interspersed with the prose of his high fantasy novel of Middle-earth, The Lord of the Rings. The book
Tolkien may have taken the method of embedding poems in a text from William Morris's 1895 Life and Death of Jason (frontispiece shown).
Tolkien's Tom Bombadil resembles the demigod Väinämöinen from the Finnish epic poem Kalevala in controlling his world with song. Painting – The Defense of the Sampo – by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1896
The Tolkien Ensemble have published their settings of all the poems in The Lord of the Rings on CDs.
Song of Eärendil
Videos
The Song of Eärendil is the longest poem in The Lord of the Rings. In the fiction, it is sung and composed by the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins in the Elvish sanctuary of Rivendell. It tells how the mariner Eä
The "Song of Eärendil" follows the Middle English poem Pearl (miniature from the Cotton Nero manuscript pictured) in its metrical and poetic intricacy.
Frodo listens to the Song of Eärendil "in highly Keatsian style". Portrait of John Keats by William Hilton, c. 1822
Eärendil's ship Vingilótë sails the sky and is made "of mithril and of elven-glass", much like the image of a spaceship. Cover of Amazing Stories, 1947