towers

888 the two towers
‘You don’t say much in all your tales about the Elves, sir,’
said Sam, suddenly plucking up courage. He had noted that
Faramir seemed to refer to Elves with reverence, and this
even more than his courtesy, and his food and wine, had won
Sam’s respect and quieted his suspicions.
‘No indeed, Master Samwise,’ said Faramir, ‘for I am not
learned in Elven-lore. But there you touch upon another
point in which we have changed, declining from Númenor
to Middle-earth. For as you may know, if Mithrandir was
your companion and you have spoken with Elrond, the
Edain, the Fathers of the Númenóreans, fought beside the
Elves in the first wars, and were rewarded by the gift of
the kingdom in the midst of the Sea, within sight of Elvenhome.
But in Middle-earth Men and Elves became estranged
in the days of darkness, by the arts of the Enemy, and by the
slow changes of time in which each kind walked further down
their sundered roads. Men now fear and misdoubt the Elves,
and yet know little of them. And we of Gondor grow like
other Men, like the men of Rohan; for even they, who are
foes of the Dark Lord, shun the Elves and speak of the
Golden Wood with dread.
‘Yet there are among us still some who have dealings with
the Elves when they may, and ever and anon one will go in
secret to Lórien, seldom to return. Not I. For I deem it
perilous now for mortal man wilfully to seek out the Elder
People. Yet I envy you that have spoken with the White
Lady.’
‘The Lady of Lórien! Galadriel!’ cried Sam. ‘You should
see her, indeed you should, sir. I am only a hobbit, and
gardening’s my job at home, sir, if you understand me, and
I’m not much good at poetry – not at making it: a bit of a
comic rhyme, perhaps, now and again, you know, but not
real poetry – so I can’t tell you what I mean. It ought to be
sung. You’d have to get Strider, Aragorn that is, or old Mr.
Bilbo, for that. But I wish I could make a song about her.
Beautiful she is, sir! Lovely! Sometimes like a great tree in
flower, sometimes like a white daffadowndilly, small and