21 February 2012

Lothlorien

Here is what Tolkien writes of Lothlorien as the company enters this wooded elf land that has escaped the diseased fallenness of the rest of Middle Earth.
The others cast themselves down upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder.

It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no color but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful.

In winter here no heart could mourn for summer or spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lorien there was no stain.
--J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter VI