#oh to be a wood-elf luring mortal travelers off the forest path with her entrancing songs....

[luthienne]

oh! can i ask for a compilation of poetry about the faerie?

— J.R.R. Tolkien, from his essay, On Fairy-Stories

❀ a faerie compilation ❀

“The same [voice] that oft-times hath Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faëry lands forlorn.”

— John Keats, from “Ode To A Nightingale”

“In the fairy stories, naming is knowledge. When I know your name, I can call your name, and when I call your name, you’ll come to me.”

— Jeanette Winterson, from Lighthousekeeping

— W.B. Yeats, from “The Stolen Child”

“We find it difficult to conceive of evil and beauty together. The fear of the beautiful fay that ran through the elder ages almost eludes our grasp.”

— J.R.R. Tolkien, from his essay, On Fairy-Stories

“Not every girl survives the forest. / Sometimes she becomes it.”

— Catherine Garbinsky, “The Princess & the Thorns”

— H.D., from “Holy Satyr”

“The elvish folk were passing bowls from hands to hand and across the fires, and some were harping and many were singing. Their gleaming hair was twined with flowers;”

— J.R.R. Tolkien, from The Hobbit

— John Keats, from La Belle Dame sans Merci

“She was light on her feet as a revenant. You would have thought she never bent a stem of grass as she passed across their little garden. When she spoke, when she sang, how sweet her voice was;”

— Angela Carter, from Burning Your Boats

— Edwin Markham, from “A Lyric of the Dawn”

— Willa Cather, from “Eurydice”

“Many places have a ‘forest that shouldn’t be entered.’ Even people who are used to working in the mountains feel there is something there. They are suddenly overcome with fear and it becomes the custom to avoid certain places. These places exist. I don’t know what is there, but I think they are real. I’m not a believer in the occult, but the world is more than we can fathom with our five senses. This world doesn’t exist just for humans. So I think it’s all right to have such things. This is why I think it’s a mistake to think about nature from the idea of efficiency, that forests should be preserved because they are essential for human beings … “I am concerned, because for me the deep forest is connected in some way to the darkness deep in my heart. I feel that if it is erased, then the darkness inside my heart would also disappear, and my existence would grow shallow.”

— Hayao Miyazaki, from “Totoro Was Not Made as a Nostalgia Piece”

— J.R.R. Tolkien, from his essay, On Fairy-Stories

— Winifred M. Letts, from “Loss”

“...and it’s dark, so very dark, and we wander, and know not where, and cannot get out of the forest…”

— Emily Dickinson, in a letter to Abiah Root

“The nights were the worst. It then became pitch-dark—not what you call pitch-dark, but really pitch: so black that you really could see nothing... Well, perhaps it is not true to say that they could see nothing: they could see eyes.”

— J.R.R. Tolkien, from The Hobbit

— Angela Carter, from “The Erl-king”

— Edgar Allen Poe, from “Fairy-Land”

— Edwin Markham, from “A Lyric of the Dawn”

— John Keats, from “Ode to a Nightingale”

“‘Why ever did I wake up!’ he cried. ‘I was having such beautiful dreams. I dreamed I was walking in a forest rather like this one, only lit with torches on the trees and lamps swinging from the branches and fires burning on the ground; and there was a great feast going on, going on for ever. A woodland king was there with a crown of leaves,’”

— J.R.R. Tolkien, from The Hobbit

— Angela Carter, from “Penetrating to the Heart of the Forest”