Ignorance

A nice title for post 300 on this blog, don't you think ?

I found the following verses on the blog "The roving medievalist". I never saw or heard them before, but I immediately liked them. Internet told me they are by J.R.R. Tolkien, who, except for the title "The Lord of the Rings" is and was a total stranger to me.

Here we go :

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

-

The poem apparently appears twice in the The Lord of the Ring's first book, The Fellowship of the Ring. I'm not touched to the point of running to the bookstore straight away.

That happens by the way - I am severely tempted to make a dash to the store to go and buy Naomi Klein's new book "The Shock Doctrine (The Rise of Disaster Capitalism)". She has a wonderfully bright, if somewhat one sided mind, the kind of mind that I like. The high priests of capitalism and of the doctrine of free market are extremely one sided too !!

But I'm wandering off. Back to Tolkien's lines. Not what I would call great poetry, but their author must have been a contrarian. Good man !