Today, as every true Tolkien fan will know, is Bilbo Baggins' birthday (also Frodo's, but his name spoils my fancy and very Middle English-esque alliteration. Sorry, Frodo.)
What better opportunity to quote Tolkien. Here is part of his description of the preparations for Bilbo's one hundred and eleventh (eleventy-first) birthday party:
Days passed and The Day drew nearer. An odd-looking waggon laden with odd-looking packages rolled into Hobbiton one evening and toiled up the Hill to Bag End. The startled hobbits peered out of lamplit doors to gape at it. It was driven by outlandish folk, singing strange songs: dwarves with long beards and deep hoods. A few of them remained at Bag End. At the end of the second week in September a cart came in through Bywater from the direction of the Brandywine Bridge in broad daylight. An old man was driving it all alone. He wore a tall pointed hat, a long grey cloak, and a silver scarf. He had a long white beard and bushy eyebrows that stuck out beyond the brim of his hat. Small hobbit-children ran after the cart all through Hobbiton and right up the hill. It had a cargo of fireworks, as they rightly guessed. At Bilbo's front door the old man began to unload: there were great bundles of fireworks of all sorts and shapes, each labelled with a large red G and [an] elf rune.
J.R.R Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (London: Harper Collins, 1992), 36-37.
Tolkein's prose is pretty mellifluous, but his poetry simply sings. Here is one extract, comparatively simple, but one of my favourites:
O slender as a willow wand! O clearer than clear water!
O reed by the living pool! Fair River-daughter!
O spring time and summer time, and spring again after!
O wind on the waterfall, and the leaves' laughter!
Ibid., 139.
And of course one could not close a Tolkien post without the last two lines from the Namárië song...
Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar.
Nai elyë hiruva. Namárië!
Nai elyë hiruva. Namárië!
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