'Mythopoeia': Tolkien's Poetic Defense of Myth and Fantasy with Commantary

My favorite Tolkien poem 'Mythopoeia' with some (ongoing) observations and commentary; enjoy.

 Tolkien the Mythmaker: Master of Middle-Earth

To one [C.S. Lewis] who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though 'breathed through silver'.

Philomythus [myth-lover] to Misomythus [myth-hater]

You look at trees and label them just so,
(for trees are 'trees', and growing is 'to grow');
you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace
one of the many minor globes of Space:
a star's a star, some matter in a ball
compelled to courses mathematical
amid the regimented, cold, inane,
where destined atoms are each moment slain.

At bidding of a Will, to which we bend
(and must), but only dimly apprehend,
great processes march on, as Time unrolls
from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;
and as on page o'er-written without clue,
with script and limning packed of various hue,
an endless multitude of forms appear,
some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,
each alien, except as kin from one
remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.
God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,
tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these
homuncular men, who walk upon the ground
with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.
The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,
green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,
thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,
slime crawling up from mud to live and die,
these each are duly registered and print
the brain's contortions with a separate dint.

Yet trees are not 'trees', until so named and seen
and never were so named, tifi those had been
who speech's involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgement, and a laugh
response of those that felt astir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves
and looking backward they beheld the elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined.

He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers bencath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.
The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.

Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-Creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.

Yes! 'wish-fulfillment dreams' we spin to cheat
our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!
Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,
or some things fair and others ugly deem?
All wishes are not idle, nor in vain
fulfillment we devise - for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is deadly certain: Evil is.

Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate
that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;
that seek no parley, and in guarded room,
though small and bate, upon a clumsy loom
weave tissues gilded by the far-off day
hoped and believed in under Shadow's sway.
Blessed are the men of Noah's race that build
their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,
and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,
a rumour of a harbor guessed by faith.

Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things not found within recorded time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organized delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).
Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have tuned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.

I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.

I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends
if by God's mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker's art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.

In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see
that all is as it is, and yet made free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in malicious choice,
and not in sound but in the tuneless voice.

In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not being dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their heads,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.

*   *   *

(please note that this commentary is ongoing; check back often)

I consider this poem not only one of Tolkien's most finest but also the most telling and revealing about his worldview and beliefs. This poem does in one fell swoop what a hundred letters and book summations could barely do in Tolkien's lifetime: it explains why Middle-Earth was brought into existence and why people need stories like LOTR and The Hobbit for their moral, spiritual, and imaginative well-being. I will be adding to this commentary as the days go by but I want to focus my first observations on this brief stanza:

Yes! 'wish-fulfillment dreams' we spin to cheat
our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!

This what I want to focus on: escapism; or rather our need (and right) to spin 'wish-fulfillment dreams' and 'ugly Fact defeat.'  We all know what the ugly Facts are - our wide range of newspapers are dedicated to reporting them to us faithfully every single day. They are indeed quite ugly, and when they invade our own personal lives (in my case, it was my parents' divorce) they become an utter torment. Imagine being imprisoned in a hellish dungeon filled with orc-like jailers who are well versed in the use of whips, racks and sleep/food deprivation and that we (you, good reader, and I) are their favorite victims. In addition to being held captive in such a place, we are told that this is how things always have been, always will be, and always should be for us. We should be grateful for the old rancid water we are given, and God help us if we should remember - or imagine - that we once drank sweet wine instead. We are entrapped by Ugly Facts, we are told by our jailers Who Seem to Know Everything all we need to know about 'Real Life'; they tell us that

  a star's a star, some matter in a ball
compelled to courses mathematical
amid the regimented, cold, inane,
where destined atoms are each moment slain.    

We are told this about stars, those mysterious awesome lights that adorn the heavens and have held mankind captivated and wonder-filled since before recorded history. Before Science came and freed us from our delusions we rarely thought that stars were just 'some matter in a ball,' they were always Something More; something amazing and wonderful; high and holy. In Middle-Earth the Big Dipper is known as the Sickle of the Valar, those seven mighty stars were placed in the sky by the gods to foretell of the Last Battle and the final doom of all evil. By doing this, the Sub-Creator of Middle-Earth - Tolkien - 'cheats' the 'facts.' The seven stars that make up the Big Dipper remain unchanged in their nature, but now they have once again regained some of their wonder and mystery and take on a new meaning. Whenever I see the Big Dipper now, I envision the end of sorrow and death and evil, and I am liberated from the Jailers and their 'realities'.
This is the right use of escapism: you escape from the 'real' world of cold hard 'facts' into a 'imaginary' world that has been rebaptized with mystery and magic; were simple everyday things like trees and flowers and horses and horns and swords and sailing ships and mountains and eagles and kings and kingdoms are made into things 'new and wonderful'. Tolkien continually denied that ME was another planet or an alternative universe. The stars by themselves proclaim that it is not so. The constellations that Frodo and his friends see and name while traveling through the Shire are the same ones I look at while riding home from work at night. This is one of the main reasons Middle-Earth has such a hold on so many people; it is filled with amazing fantastical things like Elves and Ents and dragons and Silmarils yet at the same time contains all the 'ordinary' things like forests and horses and humans and war and all the things we take for granted in the 'real world'. After a jaunt through Tolkien's Kingdom of Arda the world wherein I live is changed. I find myself paying more attention to trees, I walk on green grass and imagine the fair fields of Rohan, I see the snow-caped Rocky Mountains afar off and I am reminded of the Misty Mountains and the Dwarf kingdom of Moria. I contemplate on what it means to be a real hero and and to be self-sacrificial and learn to be grateful for the 'little things' like bread and butter and wine and friends and my horse. I have Escaped, and am Consoled, and am now on my way to Recovery.      


 Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things not found within recorded time...

They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have tuned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.

This is what Tolkien spent almost his entire life doing. This man was no stranger to the grim realities of the 'real world'. The Genesis of Middle-Earth was begun amid the muddy trenches and the Nazgul-like 

screams of mortar shells during World War I. He lost is mother and father to illness at an early age and almost all of his close friends were killed in the war. He indeed saw 'Death and ultimate defeat,' but he did not in 'despair retreat.' He labored long in Middle-Earth, creating and re-creating, writing and re-writing. 

The Lord of the Rings by itself took him 18 years to write, and even though he often despaired over ever finishing it and often wondered if it would be fit for anyone to read, he stuck through it to the end and 'kindled hearts with legendary fire.' 

To be continued...