A Song of Aryador [French translation]

In the vales of Aryador

By the wooded inland shore

Green the lakeward bends and meads

Sloping down to murmurous reeds

That whisper in the dusk o'er Aryador:

'Do you hear the many bells

Of the goats upon the fells

Where the valley tumbles downward from the pines?

Do you hear the blue woods moan

When the Sun has gone alone

To hunt the mountain-shadows in the pines?

She is lost among the hilles

And the upland slowly fills

With the shadow-folk that murmur in the fern;

And still there are the bells

And the voices in the fells

While Eastward a few stars begin to burn.

Men are kindling tiny gleams

Far below by mountain-streams

Where they dwell among the beechwoods near the shore,

But the great woods on the height

Watch the waning western light

And whisper to the wind of things of yore,

When the valley was unknown,

And the waters roared alone,

And the shadow-folk danced downward all the night,

When the Sun had fared abroad

Through great forests unexplored

And the woods were the full of wandering beams of light.

Then were voices on the fells

And the sound of ghostly bells

And a march of shadow-people o'er the height.

In the mountains by the shore

In forgotten Aryador

There was dancing and was ringing;

There were shadow-people singing

Ancient songs of olden gods in Aryador.'

• Artist:J. R. R. Tolkien