Song of Eärendil
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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
Errantry
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"Errantry" is a three-page poem by J.R.R. Tolkien, first published in The Oxford Magazine in 1933. It was included in revised and extended form in Tolkien's 1962 collection of short poems, The Adventu
Song of Eärendil
…of complex poetic mechanisms seen in the Middle English poem Pearl. The "Song of Eärendil" was written to contrast with another of Tolkien's poems, "Errantry", which uses the same mechanisms to quite different effect. In the narrative, the Hobbit Frodo Baggins, recently healed from a dangerous wound, listens…
The poem was inspired by Gilbert and Sullivan's "Major-General's Song". 1884 illustration