Poetry from Lord of the Rings – Return of the King, Bilbo’s Last Song (At the Grey Havens)

Bilbo’s Last Song (At the Grey Havens)

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
But journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship’s beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that I shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I’ll find the heavens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the star above my mast!

The poem does not itself actually appear in The Return of the King , the
last volume of the The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but takes place at it’s
very end, when many of the principal heroes of the War of the Ring prepare
to set sail into the West, to leave Middle Earth forever: among them the
great wizard Gandalf the White; Frodo Baggins, the great Ringbearer; and
his elder Bilbo, who found the Ring so long before.

” ‘Well, here at last, dear friends,” [said Gandalf], “on the shores of
the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I
will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.’

Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went aboard;
and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped
away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that
Frodo bore glimmered and was lost.