#random William topaz mcgonagall reference

[the-master-maid]

I make an attempt at…Poetry Analysis (Tolkien; In Western Lands) and end up referencing Scotland’s worst poet

In western lands beneath the Sun

the flowers may rise in Spring,

the trees may bud, the waters run, 

the merry finches sing.

Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night 

and swaying beeches bear

the Elven-stars as jewels white

amid their branching hair.

Though here at journey's end I lie

in darkness buried deep,

beyond all towers strong and high,

beyond all mountains steep,

above all shadows rides the Sun

and Stars for ever dwell:

I will not say the Day is done,

nor bid the Stars farewell.

- Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

I am no man! sorry, I mean, I am no poetry major! So, if the following analysis makes you weep (and the tears shed are not the happy tears of one who believes they’ve just encountered the next great literary critic) send me an ask,  let me know or just think to yourself, “well, this is shite but nae mind. The Mastermaid can go hang for all I care. I’d rather read William Topaz McGonagall anyway.” and fyi, WTM is known as the worst poet in Scotland. People used to throw cabbages at him in the 1800s, poor sod!

What poetic meter is this poem written in? Tolkien always uses traditional poetic meter. long after it went out of fashion, I might add. Hip with the kids in the age of jazz and razzmatazz he was not! Nor were he and Lewis jumping into a motorcar together to get stoned and take to the open road while riffing on Kerouac. No, they were cozying up in a pub and probably trying not to make moony eyes at each other while they argued about God. But, I digress…

Meter, what meter!?

Iambic Tetrameter alternating with iambic trimeter maybe? It’s the same meter as Lewis Carrol's the Walrus and the Carpenter. 

Iambic Heptameter (Fourteener) featuring rhyming couplets.? AABBCCDD rhyme structure. Each couplet rhymes in two places, at the end of the first part of the line and at the very end. I suppose that’s why each half-line is actually written on a separate line? (and if you are counting each separate line then you get the rhyming structure: ABABCDCD, EFEFBGBG. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of poetic structure can let me know if any of this is correct and how best to show the structure of this poem...)

There’s a rising and falling throughout the poem as the poet speaks of the things in the sky: sun, stars, birds, cloudless night, tree branches, high towers, steep mountains, and the things down low down; deep buried darkness, the flowers rising in spring, waters running. The very images that are touched upon bring one up and down, up to the sun, down to the earth, up to the stars, down to deeply buried darkness. Up to towers and mountains and stars. Inside this up and down movement of the images is further movement located in nature; water running, trees budding, birds singing. The images of home are very much alive. Moving, singing, growing. But the images near the beginning (the sun) and at the end (the stars) are things from the heavens. 

At the beginning of the poem though, the poet has to take us out of the dark and empty tower where we sit with Sam in despair and so the first thought is the western lands. The lands that pull us out. Once we are out of the tower and in the western lands, we are free to see up to the heavens and down to the little things on the earth.

The “may” is interesting. It illustrates the poet's hope that these natural cycles are happening or perhaps that these things are allowed to happen: the flower may rise, trees may bud ...the poet then imagines that perhaps it is night there, but the night he imagines far away in the west is not evil but full of elven starlight and beech trees: things of beauty and not of fear and evil. It brings to mind that thought that Tolkien may have given to Gandalf (can’t look it up at the moment as I’m rather horizontally prone) that even darkness was not evil in the beginning. Or of Bombadil when he says that he walked in darkness before the shadow… a theme, a motif, if you will; the idea of a pure darkness before the Fall.

I am told that when studying poetic meter you have to scan it with specially marks that make you look either like you are Someone Really Smart or like an actor auditioning for A Beautiful Mind. You need a way to write the rhythm; da-dum da-dum da-dum da-dum (short/unstressed followed by long/stressed syllable) Or dum-da da-dum dum dum …well, you get the picture. So I’ve used x for my da snd / for my dum. Definitely makes you feel like a S.R.S. until you get it wrong and end up metaphorically knocking your head on the piano like that composer muppet in the 1980s Sesame Street, and yelling “I’ll never get it, never, never.” Sorry, digressing again…

Here goes my attempt at scansion and noting the rhyming pattern.

      x    /     x     /      x    /      x    /      x    /          x     /     x    /     II

A) In western lands beneath the Sun the flowers may rise in Spring,

      x      /       x      /      x    /    x    /      x    /    x   /    x   /    II

A) the trees may bud, the waters run, the merry finches sing.

B) Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night and swaying beeches bear

B) the Elven-stars as jewels white amid their branching hair.

C) Though here at journey's end I lie in darkness buried deep,

C) beyond all towers strong and high, beyond all mountains steep,

D) above all shadows rides the Sun and Stars for ever dwell:

D) I will not say the Day is done, nor bid the Stars farewell.

The poet only gives one line to his present predicament (though here at journey’s end…) and he chooses to focus on the things that are beyond the reach of the darkness. From the beginning of the second stanza he also starts with himself being at ‘journey’s end’ a reference to death and hopelessness of ever getting out. But by the fourth line, he says ‘I will not say the day is done, nor bid the stars farewell’: he resists and refuses to say the day is done, he refuses to say goodbye. He is resisting hopelessness and evil, darkness and death. His hopelessness, in other words, is short lived. It very much is a Sam poem. And of course, the only thing that can make Sam feel any hopelessness whatsoever is the loss of frodo.