I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calfThat’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,It totters when she licks it with her tongue.I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

—Robert Frost, “The Pasture”

The Easterlings are passing through the wallThe Land of Golden Domes is falling inThe Cradle of the East is soon to fallBy mutual destruction from within.

The Dragon, too, may open up its doorsAnd come to claim Formosa as a prizeThe Black Foe creeps across our quiet shoresRevenge the growing shimmer in its eyes.

The Western world is unprepared to actWhen wraiths and balrogs, thought to be their guides,Reward offense while kindness is attackedAnd peace becomes an outrage that divides.

We stand to join a darkness seldom knownIf Angband’s king is given back his throne.

This poem isn’t really about Middle Earth.

And to some degree, neither is Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien’s praised for his world-building, but I don’t think he’d place that much stock in the term himself. He’d also scoff at placing his story within the context of the 20th century’s post-war years.

During Martin Shaw’s talk at the Beatrice Institute this past Saturday, there was a question as to whether Lord of the Rings was itself a myth. I’m with Martin in suggesting that as wonderful as the stories are, they’re more mythic than myth itself. A distinction I’d bet Tolkien would be fine with.

The Professor was very explicit about his intention not to write an allegory. But neither was he out to build a magic system or write a myth for his time and place. He was trying to get an audience who recently turned its back on the mythopoetic in favor of modernity to perceive the former again.

“Recovery,” he said in On Fairy Stories, “is a regaining … though I might venture to say, ‘seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them.’” We need to “clean our windows,” he says, “so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—of possessiveness.”

There’s a big difference between writing lore for a pasture spring, using a pasture spring as a metaphor for English reconstruction, and inviting you to witness the thing for yourself.

If The Professor would allow me this slight suggestion, I would put it as seeing vividly, not just clearly.

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