One for his joy and youth in Doriath

OF DORIATH

Did ever sing the yellow-throated lark
So like the stars in tender dreams of night?
For there beneath the elder-bowers dark
Sweet limbs of her that pluck from light to light
Its hues to band her long and living hair--
And stars upon her locks of shadow lay.
And words shall bloom beneath the hemlocks fair
Their will my lyre-strings and lips obey:
Like vowelléd music falling quick and oft
With woodnotes wild that minds cannot command;
They follow her, whose hallowed footfalls soft
Do touch like breaths upon the eager land.
O Doriath, a splendid ever-spring,
That flowers forth when nightingales do sing!

One for his exile in Eriador, searching for Lúthien

OF ERIADOR

The twilit hours turn silver fast; a stark
And fallow sky. And wroth, discordant rains:
Rage! Rage! Rend these airs, choke the measured dark,
And drown the dreaded dusk on fretful plains.
O shadowed, wretched earth, thou selfsame earth
Whereon the girdled Doriath-- High in airs
Complex his lark did sing in music mirth;
Sweetly though his song it well compares
The bleats of ragged, dinsome rain. This land
of dross and barbs of fern; these winds untame
That die in groaning grass-- had I in hand
The fairest hemlock 'tis so much the same.
For Daeron fair and foul alike: A house of frost
For a wounded shadow. Lúthien is lost.