Chapter Sixty-Seven: Where Shall I Find Rest?

Translator’s Note: My dear queen helped me with the translation of this chapter. It also gives some intriguing evidence as to the authorship of ‘The Sea Bell’ as there are definite similarities between that poem which is reproduced here and the latter part of Frodo’s journal entry.

I still reach for the Ring at times. Most times it is a simple reflex action, almost without thought. I know you’ve seen me do it and I am afraid what you think. Afraid you would know I still wished it were there. I’m glad you weren’t there on the 13^th when we were at the Cotton’s and my first Rethe illness struck. I longed for you but I knew you had other places to heal than my heart, then I was glad that you did not see me in such a state. All is indeed dark and empty but I was well or well enough by the time you returned. Still I know little gets past you and if you didn’t know that I had suffered, you at least know that the pain hasn’t left me. Each time you have seen my hand reach up toward where the Ring used to be, your eyes hold sorrow but also the most tender love and compassion as they always have. You gently draw my hand away and kiss it and smile for me. As you guide my hand to clasp the Queen’s gem instead, I somehow find the strength to smile for you. You hold me then, murmur comforts and tell me that you love me and I hold onto you and tell you the same and for a moment, just a moment, the longing leaves me and I am simply a hobbit again.

You continue to reach for someone you believe to be still alive and if it wasn’t for you, I would indeed be what I sometimes feel in my darkest despair, buried under the ash of the Mountain. I have been dying bit by bit since our Quest started. There is so little of me left for you to rescue, to hold onto. You don’t know that and I can’t tell you. In my blackest nights, I want to scream it out to you, that you love a ghost, someone who no longer exists. But I never do. I can’t hurt you that way. I can’t risk losing that love that continues ever to stream from your eyes and I know it has mixed at times with your tears. Seeing that love is the only thing that has kept me from cracking completely, though I wonder sometimes, if I have in truth for thinking of leaving the one person that is keeping sane. Have I gone mad already? I am filled still with horrible violation and longing and I know there will be no lasting relief for me here. I must leave, but still I desperately hold on to your hope and love for me, as tightly as I hold onto you and would forever if I could. You continue to hold onto someone you love so much so I hold onto your hope that person can be once more just as I held onto your hope to get to the Fire. Now I must hold onto your hope that I can return from it. I cannot abandon myself to despair completely since I see such hope and confidence in your eyes. I know I can return. I know I must return. I won’t always be empty of all but this terrible longing I can find no relief for except in your arms. There I can be just for a moment the person you still think I am. I look into your eyes and see your boundless love and your smile and I drown there for as long as I am allowed, losing my new self and finding my old self. But it is only there that I still exist, the person you have loved so long. I hope he is also to be found in the West for I wish to look in a mirror one day and see him myself, see what you see. I know you see all the pain I would hide from you if I could, but I know you see something more that I cannot now, except in dim memory.

I know how many nights you have stood at the threshold of my bedroom, making sure I am sleeping. I have tried to pretend that I am, but I know you are not fooled. How many times have I heard you come in and hold me and gone without sleep yourself, softly singing to me, stroking my curls and wiping my tears, just so I can get a moment’s rest? And for all that ceaseless love and care for months and years, after you kiss my brow and leave me, I later wake once more and think about leaving you and you are not there then to wipe at my tears and too soon and not soon enough, I will not be there to wipe yours. Oh, my Sam, how I have hurt you and continue to and how you have never stopped loving me. You have forgiven my every darkness, every stab at your heart, without a moment’s hesitation, but I have yet to give you your worst wound. Will you still love me then? Of course you will, whether I deserve it or not. That is the only thing keeping me sane. I do not know what is my own worst wound, the one the Ring gave me that continues to bleed and I fear sometimes always will, or the one I will be giving you and so myself, when I tell you I must forsake all your care, admit that it is not enough and that I must seek healing elsewhere.

Oh, my most beloved brother, how can I possibly say that? How can I even think it? Am I making a terrible mistake? In my desperation to leave one agony, I know I will be causing myself another and one to you and to Merry and to Pippin. Will it be worse than the one I am living through? How can I be so selfish to seek solace and relief when I know it will cause you three, dearest to my heart, pain that I could spare you if I stayed? Would it be better just to stay then and bear my own agony as I bore the burden while the Ring still lived? I have long struggled with those wonderings and have come to the bitter conclusion that I must leave. This pain is greater than your love and I never thought anything could be greater than that. The longing to leave, to have more than momentary relief from the pain and evil lust that still holds me bound has been with me so long I don’t even know anymore when it began again. I know I felt it in Rivendell when you said it had everything and I had agreed but said except the Sea. I gained a greater understanding of both on the 6^th and the 13^th when the memories of the darkness and the agony of wounds and loss held me and I cried aloud for release.

But you were not there to hear and darkness filled me all that day. How long have I pleaded in tears and wondered why no one heard me. Why can no one see these invisible tears? Why does no one hear my silent cry? Why does no one understand my loneliness and fears? Why? Why do they all just pass me by? I am lonely and so afraid-- One small being on this darkened sphere. My hope, my confidence, my joy fade. I'm overwhelmed by floods of anxious fear. Why? Oh, why does no one hear? When will I awake from this nightmare-dream? When will someone hear my voiceless plea? When will someone wake at night and finally hear me scream? When will someone come to comfort me? I am weary. It's been so long-- So long I have stayed here on my knees, too many nights since I have felt strong. If you can reach me, come and rescue me. When? Oh, when will someone see? I don't know how to let go. That's the only reason I keep holding on. I can't see the morning, but what else can I do but look for the dawn? Till I'm seen or heard, I won't say a word; I'll pray and wait. But come quickly, before it's too late.

I walked by the sea, and there came to me,
as a star-beam on the wet sand,
a white shell like a sea-bell;
trembling it lay in my wet hand.
In my fingers shaken I heard waken
a ding within, by a harbour bar
a buoy swinging, a call ringing
over endless seas, faint now and far.

Then I saw a boat silently float
On the night-tide, empty and grey.
‘It is later than late! Why do we wait?'
I leapt in and cried: ‘Bear me away!'

It bore me away, wetted with spray,
wrapped in a mist, wound in a sleep,
to a forgotten strand in a strange land.
In the twilight beyond the deep
I heard a sea-bell swing in the swell,
dinging, dinging, and the breakers roar
on the hidden teeth of a perilous reef;
and at last I came to a long shore.
White it glimmered, and the sea simmered
with star-mirrors in a silver net;
cliffs of stone pale as ruel-bone
in the moon-foam were gleaming wet.
Glittering sand slid through my hand,
Dust of pearl and jewel-grist,
Trumpets of opal, roses of coral,
Flutes of green and amethyst.
But under cliff-eaves there were glooming caves,
weed-curtained, dark and grey'
a cold air stirred in my hair,
and the light waned, as I hurried away.

Down from a hill ran a green rill;
its water I drank to my heart's ease.
Up its fountain-stair to a country fair
of ever-eve I came, far from the seas,
dclimbing into meadows of fluttering shadows;
flowers lay there like fallen stars,
and on a blue pool, glassy and cool,
like floating moons the nenuphars.
Alders were sleeping, and willows weeping
by a slow river of rippling weeds;
gladdon-swords guarded the fords,
and green spears, and arrow-reeds.

There was echo of song all the evening long
down in the valley, many a thing
running to and fro: hares white as snow,
voles out of holes; moths on the wing
with lantern-eyes; in quiet surpise
brocks were staring out of dard doors.
I heard dancing there, music in the air,
feet going quick on the green floors.
But wherever I came it was ever the same:
the feet fled, and all was still;
never a greeting, only the fleeting pipes, voices, horns on the hill.

Of river-leaves and the rush-sheaves
I made me a mantle of jewel-green,
a tall wand to hold, and a flag of gold;
my eyes shone like the star-sheen.
With flowers crowned I stood on a mound,
and shrill as a call at cock-crow?
Why do none speak, wherever I go?
Here now I stand, king of this land,
with gladdon-sword and reed-mace.
Answer my call! Come forth all!
Speak to me words! Show me a face!'

Black came a cloud as a night-shroud.
Like a dark mole groping I went,
to the ground falling, on my hands crawling
with eyes blind and my back bent.
I crept to a wood: silent it stood
in its dead leaves; bare were its boughs.
There must I sit, wandering in wit,
while owls snored in their hollow house.
For a year and day there must I stay:
beetles were tapping in the rotten trees,
spiders were weaving, in the mould heaving
puffballs loomed about my knees.

At last there came light in my long night,
and I saw my hair hanging grey.
‘Bent though I be, I must find the sea!
I have lost myself, ,and I know not the way,
but let me be gone!' Then I stumbled on;
like a hunting bat shadow was over me;
in my ears dinned a withering wind,
and with ragged briars I tried to cover me.
My hands were torn and my knees worn,
and years were heavy upon my back,
when the rain in my face took a salt taste,
and I smelled the smell of sea-wrack.

Birds came sailing, mewing, wailing;
I heard voices in cold caves,
seals barking, and rocks snarling,
and in spout-holes the gulping of waves.
Winter came fast; into a mist I passed, to land's end my years I bore;
Snow was in the air, ice in my hair,
darkness was lying on the last shore.

There still afloat waited the boat,
in the tide lifting, its prow tossing.
Wearily I lay, as it bore me away,
the waves climbing, the seas crossing,
passing old hulls clustered with gulls
and great ships laden with light,
coming to haven, dark as a raven,
silent as snow, deep in the night.

Houses were shuttered, wind round them muttered,
roads were empty. I sat by a door,
and where drizzling rain poured down a drain
I cast away all that I bore:
in my clutching hand some grains of sand,
And a sea-shell silent and dead.
Never will my ear that bell hear,
never my feet that shore tread,
never again, as in sad lane,
in blind alley and in long street
ragged I walk. To myself I talk;
For still they speak not, men that meet.

* * *

Oh, my love, how could I have been away from you on the 13^th? I had to read your book to know that you suffered one of your illnesses that day. How could I have missed that? How could I have not known? I wish I hadn’t been away repairing what damage I could, when it was your heart that was the most damaged. The restoration of plants and trees was dear to me, but you were and are far dearer. I should have never left you. Mayhap I couldn’t have stopped it, but I could have been there for you, to help you through it. You shouldn’t have been suffering still. You should have had peace and reward and a long, happy, healthy life. You have had that and I rejoice everyday for that, but still it was not here that you found your rest. Your burden had broken you. You tried to hide your second Rethe illness, but I wasn't so fretful and excited over Elanor's upcoming birth that I didn't notice you weren't right.  You were trying that hard not to have me see how much you were hurting so I pretended that you were being successful, though it broke my heart even more.  It was that hard to watch you struggle with that, trying to hide all you can, though you should have known that you couldn’t, not from me or Merry or Pippin.

I wish we could have all gone with you and all our bairns.  I think that would have been too much to ask of Rose, though the children would have loved it and you could have been a proper uncle to them all, teaching them all the things you taught me and conspiring with them in all sorts of mischief. How much I would have loved to have seen that! I see it often in my heart and I smile a lot more for no apparent reason and Rose smiles back because she knows it because of the children and because of you. How it always warmed and healed my heart a bit to see you smile through your pain while you were still here and how much more wonderful it is to see them now free of all woe. I did anything and everything I could just to see one of your smiles. Do you have any idea how beautiful that made you, even if you were holding back tears just so you could smile for me instead? I love you so, dearest.  I love you so.