Two Stunning Tolkien-themed Sonnets by Isobel Granby

 

  

  Tolkien Sonnet 1

 

  Not idly do the leaves of Lórien fall:

  Unheeded, nor like distant stars, unseen

  Save by a lonely watcher on a wall,

  Lost in their flight — but hidden, green on green,

  One sweet familiar voice amid the fray,

  The fighting and the foes, calls out, half drowned

  By harsher tongues — light footsteps in this clay

  Still stand apart from deeper marks around.

  Still rally, for our journey’s not yet done,

  For our friends’ sake, our strength once more renewed,

  For desperate hopes, which speed our desperate run

  To rescue or revenge. Though shadows brood

  I’ll hope that for the little ground we gain

  Our long pursuit will not have been in vain.

 

 Tolkien Sonnet 2

 

 Far from our hopes, by changing shadows bounded,

 Where light has no reflection in the eyes

 Of friends, and narrow paths appear, ungrounded,

 To drop into the deeps, and never rise

 Save to appear ahead, entwined by thorn —

 The thicket-choked left turn, the right turn fraught

 With cairns — built long ago, and long forlorn.

 Here wanderers, directionless, are caught

 For every crest their eager feet may scale

 Leads, featureless, to lands without a sky —

 Yet for all this, the long uncertain trail,

 For all the questions asked without reply,

 Our tales untold, the future yet unsure —

 I do not think this darkness will endure.

 

Karin Murray-Bergquist writing under pen name Isobel Granby 

Isobel Granby is a PhD student at Memorial University of Newfoundland, in the field of folklore, and one half of the Practical Fantasists creative team (as Karin Murray-Bergquist). Along with her love of theatre, she enjoys writing fiction and poetry, sailing, and watercolour painting, particularly botanical art. Her freelance writing has ranged from articles on subarctic lichens to following the saga trails of Iceland, and in her academic life, she is an occasional Romanticist and medievalist.