The Horns of Ylmir lyrics

'Twas in the Land of Willows where the grass is long and green—

I was fingering my harp-strings, for a wind had crept unseen

And was speaking in the tree-tops, while the voices of the reeds

Were whispering reedy whispers as the sunset touched the meads

Inland musics subtly magic that those reeds alone could weave

'Twas in the Land of Willows that once Ylmir came at eve.

In the twilight by the river on a hollow thing of shell

He made immortal music, till my heart beneath his spell

Was broken in the twilight, and the meadows faded dim

To great grey waters heaving round the rocks where sea-birds swim.

I heard them wailing round me where the black cliffs towered high

And the old primeval starlight flickered palely in the sky.

In that dim and perilous region in whose great tempestuous ways

I heard no sound of men's voices, in those eldest of the days,

I sat on the ruined margin of the deep-voiced echoing sea

Whose roaring foaming music crashed in endless cadency

On the land besieged for ever in an aeon of assaults

And torn in towers and pinnacles and caverned in great vaults;

And its arches shook with thunder and its feet were piled with shapes

Riven in old sea-warfare from those crags and sable capes.

Lo! I heard the embattled tempest roaring up behind the tide

When the trumpet of the first winds sounded, and the grey sea sang and cried

As a new white wrath woke in him, and his armies rose to war

And swept in billowed cavalry toward the walled and moveless shore.

There the windy-bannered fortress of those high and virgin coasts

Flung back the first thin feelers of the elder tidal hosts;

Flung back the restless streamers that like arms of a tentacled thing

Coiling and creeping onward did rustle and suck and cling.

Then a sigh arose and a murmuring in that stealthy-whispering van,

While, behind, the torrents gathered and the leaping billows ran,

Till the foam-haired water-horses in green rolling volumes came—-

A mad tide trampling landward—and their war-song burst to flame.

Huge heads were tossed in anger and their crests were towers of froth

And the song of the great seas were singing was a song of unplumbed wrath,

For through that giant welter Ossë's trumpets fiercely blew,

That the voices of the flood yet deeper and the High Wind louder grew;

Deep hollows hummed and fluted as they suck the sea-winds in;

Spumes and great white spoutings yelled shrilly o'er the din;

Gales blew the bitter tresses of the sea in the land's dark face

And wild airs thick with spindrift fled on a whirling race

From battle unto battle, till the power of all the seas

Gathered like one mountain about Ossë's awful knees,

And a dome of shouting water smote those dripping black facades

And its catastrophic fountains smashed in deafening cascades.

Then the immeasurable hymn of Ocean I heard as it rose and fell

To its organ whose stops were the piping of gulls and the thunderous swell;

Heard the burden of the waters and the singing of the waves

Whose voices came on for ever and went rolling to the caves,

Where an endless fugue of echoes splashed against wet stone

And arose and mingled in unison into a murmuring drone—-

'Twas a music of uttermost deepness that stirred in the profound,

And all the voices of all oceans were gathered to that sound;

'Twas Ylmir, Lord of Waters, with all-stilling hand that made

Unconquerable harmonies, that the roaring sea obeyed,

That its waters poured off and Earth heaved her glistening shoulders again

Naked up into the airs and cloudrifts and sea-going rain,

Till the suck and suck of green eddies and the slap of ripples was all

That reached to mine isléd stone, save the old unearthly call

Of sea-birds long-forgotten and the grating of ancieng wings.

Thus murmurous slumber took me mid those far-off eldest things

(In a lonely twilit region down whose old chaotic ways

I heard no sound of men's voices, in those eldest of the days

When the world reeled in the tumult as the Great Gods tore the Earth

In the darkness, in the tempest of the cycles ere our birth),

Till the tides went out, and the Wind died, and did all sea music's cease

And I woke to silent caverns and empty sands and peace.

Then the magic drifted from me and that music loosed its bands—

Far, far-off, conches calling—lo! I stood in the sweet lands,

And the meadows were about me where the weeping willows grew,

Where the long grass stirred beside me, and my feet were drenched with dew.

Only the reeds were rustling, but a mist lay on the streams

Like a sea-roke drawn far inland, like a shred of salt sea-dreams.

'Twas in the Land of Willows that I heard th' unfathomed breath

Of the Horns of Ylmir calling—and shall hear them till my death.

• Artist:J. R. R. Tolkien