From today’s Writer’s Almanac, remembering J.R.R. Tolkien:
He came across an Old English poem by Cynewulf, which contained a couplet that fascinated him: “Hail Earendel brightest of angels / Over Middle Earth sent to men.”
and today, I pause with this favorite quote, especially apt in the dark turn of the year, to remind us that evil and darkness is not the entire world and that we have the ability to hold it back with hope, goodness and action.
…the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo’s side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.
~~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, Book II, The Land of Shadow.
