Come up her sunny aisles and perfumed halls: A sad and haunting magic note,
A strand of silver glass remote.
65
Then all thy trees, old town upon a windy bent,
Do loose a long sad whisper and lament;
For going are the rich-hued hours, th’enchanted nights
When flitting ghost-moths dance like satellites
Round tapers in the moveless air; 70
And doomed already are the radiant dawns,
The fingered sunlight dripping on long lawns;
The odour and the slumbrous noise of meads,
When all the sorrel, flowers, and plumйd weeds
Go down before the scyther’s share. 75
Strange sad October robes her dewy furze
In netted sheen of gold-shot gossamers,
And then the wide-umbraged elm begins to fail;
Her mourning multitudes of leaves go pale
Seeing afar the icy shears 80
Of Winter, and his blue-tipped spears Marching unconquerable upon the sun
Of bright All-Hallows. Then their hour is done,
And wanly borne on wings of amber pale
They beat the wide airs of the fading vale
85
And fly like birds across the misty meres. The Third Verses
Yet is this season dearest to my heart,
Most fitting to the little faded town With sense of splendid pomps that now depart
In mellow sounds of sadness echoing down 90
The paths of stranded mists. O! gentle time
When the late mornings are bejewelled with rime,
And the blue shadows gather on the distant woods. The fairies know thy early crystal dusk
And put in secret on their twilit hoods 95
Of grey and filmy purple, and long bands
Of frosted starlight sewn by silver hands.
They know the season of the brilliant night,
When naked elms entwine in cloudy lace The Pleiades, and long-armed poplars bar the light
100
Of golden-rondured moons with glorious face. O fading fairies and most lonely elves
Then sing ye, sing ye to yourselves
A woven song of stars and gleaming leaves; Then whirl ye with the sapphire-wingйd winds;
105
Then do ye pipe and call with heart that grieves To sombre men: ‘Remember what is gone—
The magic sun that lit Kortirion!’
Now are thy trees, old, old Kortirion, Seen rising up through pallid mists and wan, 110
Like vessels floating vague and long afar Down opal seas beyond the shadowy bar Of cloudy ports forlorn: They leave behind for ever havens throng’d Wherein their crews a while held feasting long 115
And gorgeous ease, who now like windy ghosts Are wafted by slow airs to empty coasts; There are they sadly glimmering borne Across the plumbless ocean of oblivion. Bare are thy trees become, Kortirion, 120
And all their summer glory swiftly gone. The seven lampads of the Silver Bear Are waxen to a wondrous flare That flames above the fallen year. Though cold thy windy squares and empty streets; 125
Though elves dance seldom in thy pale retreats (Save on some rare and moonlit night, A flash, a whispering glint of white), Yet would I never need depart from here. The Last Verse
I need not know the desert or red palaces
130
Where dwells the sun, the great seas or the magic isles, The pinewoods piled on mountain-terraces;
And calling faintly down the windy miles Touches my heart no distant bell that rings
In populous cities of the Earthly Kings.
135
Here do I find a haunting ever-near content Set midmost of the Land of withered Elms
(Alalminуrл of the Faery Realms);
Here circling slowly in a sweet lament Linger the holy fairies and immortal elves
140
Singing a song of faded longing to themselves.
I give next the text of the poem as my father rewrote it in 1937, in the later of slightly variant forms.
Kortirion among the Trees
I
O fading town upon an inland hill,
Old shadows linger in thine ancient gate, Thy robe is grey, thine old heart now is still;
Thy towers silent in the mist await 5
Their crumbling end, while through the storeyed elms
The Gliding Water leaves these inland realms,
And slips between long meadows to the Sea, Still bearing downward over murmurous falls
One day and then another to the Sea; 10
And slowly thither many years have gone,
Since first the Elves here built Kortirion.
O climbing town upon thy windy hill
With winding streets, and alleys shady-walled Where now untamed the peacocks pace in drill
15
Majestic, sapphirine, and emerald; Amid the girdle of this sleeping land,
Where silver falls the rain and gleaming stand
The whispering host of old deep-rooted trees That cast long shadows in many a bygone noon,
20
And murmured many centuries in the breeze; Thou art the city of the Land of Elms,
Alalminуrл in the Faery Realms.
Sing of thy trees, Kortirion, again:
The beech on hill, the willow in the fen,
25
The rainy poplars, and the frowning yews
Within thine agйd courts that muse
In sombre splendour all the day; Until the twinkle of the early stars
Comes glinting through their sable bars,
30
And the white moon climbing up the sky
Looks down upon the ghosts of trees that die
Slowly and silently from day to day. O Lonely Isle, here was thy citadel,
Ere bannered summer from his fortress fell.
35
Then full of music were thine elms:
Green was their armour, green their helms,
The Lords and Kings of all thy trees. Sing, then, of elms, renowned Kortirion,
That under summer crowd their full sail on,
40
And shrouded stand like masts of verdurous ships,
A fleet of galleons that proudly slips
Across long sunlit seas. II
Thou art the inmost province of the fading isle,
Where linger 1yet the Lonely Companies; 45
Still, undespairing, here they slowly file
Along thy paths with solemn harmonies: The holy people of an elder day,
Immortal Elves, that singing fair and fey
Of vanished things that were, and could be yet, 50
Pass like a wind among the rustling trees,
A wave of bowing grass, and we forget Their tender voices like wind-shaken bells
Of flowers, their gleaming hair like golden asphodels.
Once Spring was here with joy, and all was fair
55
Among the trees; but Summer drowsing by the stream Heard trembling in her heart the secret player
Pipe, out beyond the tangle of her forest dream, The long-drawn tune that elvish voices made
Foreseeing Winter through the leafy glade;
60
The late flowers nodding on the ruined walls Then stooping heard afar that haunting flute
Beyond the sunny aisles and tree-propped halls; For thin and clear and cold the note,
As strand of silver glass remote.
65
Then all thy trees, Kortirion, were bent,
And shook with sudden whispering lament:
For passing were the days, and doomed the nights
When flitting ghost-moths danced as satellites
Round tapers in the moveless air; 70
And doomed already were the radiant dawns,
The fingered sunlight drawn across the lawns;
The odour and the slumbrous noise of meads,
Where all the sorrel, flowers, and plumйd weeds
Go down before the scyther’s share. 75
When cool October robed her dewy furze
In netted sheen of gold-shot gossamers,
Then the wide-umbraged elms began to fail;
Their mourning multitude of leaves grew pale,
Seeing afar the icy spears 80
Of Winter marching blue behind the sun
Of bright All-Hallows. Then their hour was done,
And wanly borne on wings of amber pale
They beat the wide airs of the fading vale,
And flew like birds across the misty meres.
III
85
This is the season dearest to the heart,
And time most fitting to the ancient town, With waning musics sweet that slow depart