The Lays of Beleriand by J. R. R. Tolkien Read Free Book Online Page A

wine
    that went as water in their wild revels.
    Now tales have told that trapped as a child
    he was dragged by the Dwarves to their deep mansions, and in Nogrod nurtured, and in nought was like, spite blood and birth, to the blissful Elves.
    His heart hated Hurin's offspring
    and the bowman Beleg; so biding his while
    he fled their fellowship and forest hidings
    to the merciless Orcs, whose moon-pallid
    cruel-curved blades to kill spare not;
    than whose greed for gold none greater burns
    save in hungry hearts of the hell-dragons.
    He betrayed his troth; traitor made him
    and the forest fastness of his fellows in arms he opened to the Orcs, nor his oath heeded.
    There they fought and fell by foes outnumbered, by treachery trapped at a time of night
    when their fires faded and few were waking --
    some wakened never, not for wild noises,
    nor cries nor curses, nor clashing steel,
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    swept as they slumbered to the slades of death.
    But Turin they took, though towering mighty
    at the Huntsman's hand he hewed his foemen,
    as a bear at bay mid bellowing hounds,
    unheeding his hurts; at the hest of Morgoth
    yet living they lapped him, his limbs entwining, with hairy hands and hideous arms.
    Then Beleg was buried in the bodies of the fallen, as sorely wounded he swooned away;
    and all was over, and the Orcs triumphed.
    The dawn over Doriath dimly kindled
    saw Blodrin Bor's son by a beech standing
    with throat thirled by a thrusting arrow,
    whose shaven shaft, shod with poison,
    and feather-winged, was fast in the tree.
    He bargained the blood of his brothers for gold: thus his meed was meted -- in the mirk at random by an orc-arrow his oath came home.
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    From the magic mazes of Melian the Queen
    they haled unhappy Hurin's offspring,
    lest he flee his fate; but they fared slowly
    and the leagues were long of their laboured way over hill and hollow to the high places,
    where the peaks and pinnacles of pitiless stone looming up lofty are lapped in cloud,
    and veiled in vapours vast and sable;
    where Eiglir Engrin, the Iron Hills, lie
    o'er the hopeless halls of Hell upreared
    wrought at the roots of the roaring cliffs
    of Thangorodrim's thunderous mountain.
    Thither led they laden with loot and evil;
    but Beleg yet breathed in blood drenched
    aswoon, till the sun to the South hastened,
    and the eye of day was opened wide.
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    Then he woke and wondered, and weeping took him, and to Turin Thalion his thoughts were turned, that o'erborne in battle and bound he had seen.
    Then he crawled from the corpses that had covered him over, weary, wounded, too weak to stand.
    So Thingol's thanes athirst and bleeding
    in the forest found him: his fate willed not
    that he should drink the draught of death from foes.
    Thus they bore him back in bitter torment
    his tidings to tell in the torchlit halls
    of Thingol the king; in the Thousand Caves
    to be healed whole by the hands enchanted
    of Melian Mablui, the moonlit queen.
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    Ere a week was outworn his wounds were cured, but his heart's heaviness those hands of snow nor soothed nor softened, and sorrow-laden
    he fared to the forest. No fellows sought he
    in his hopeless hazard, but in haste alone
    he followed the feet of the foes of Elfland,
    the dread daring, and the dire anguish,
    that held the hearts of Hithlum's men
    and Doriath's doughtiest in a dream of fear.
    Unmatched among Men, or magic-wielding
    Elves, or hunters of the Orc-kindred,
    or beasts of prey for blood pining,
    was his craft and cunning, that cold and dead an unseen slot could scent o'er stone,
    foot-prints could find on forest pathways
    that lightly on the leaves were laid in moons long waned, and washed by windy rains.
    The grim Glamhoth's goblin armies
    go cunning-footed, but his craft failed not
    to tread their trail, till the lands were darkened, and the light was lost in lands unknown.
    Never-dawning night was netted clinging
    in the black branches