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the hand of Barahir was bare!’
Yet as he spake an arrow sped;
with riven heart he crumpled dead.
Thus Morgoth loved that his own foe
should in his service deal the blow
that punished the breaking of his word.
But Morgoth laughed not when he heard
that Beren like a wolf alone
sprang madly from behind a stone
amid that camp beside the well,
and seized the ring, and ere the yell
of wrath and rage had left their throat
had fled his foes. His gleaming coat
was made of rings of steel no shaft
could pierce, a web of dwarvish craft;
and he was lost in rock and thorn,
for in charméd hour was Beren born;
their hungry hunting never learned
the way his fearless feet had turned.
As fearless Beren was renowned,
as man most hardy upon ground,
while Barahir yet lived and fought;
but sorrow now his soul had wrought
to dark despair, and robbed his life
of sweetness, that he longed for knife,
or shaft, or sword, to end his pain,
and dreaded only thraldom’s chain.
Danger he sought and death pursued,
and thus escaped the fate he wooed,
and deeds of breathless wonder dared
whose whispered glory widely fared,
and softly songs were sung at eve
of marvels he did once achieve
alone, beleaguered, lost at night
by mist or moon, or neath the light
of the broad eye of day. The woods
that northward looked with bitter feuds
he filled and death for Morgoth’s folk;
his comrades were the beech and oak,
who failed him not, and many things
with fur and fell and feathered wings;
and many spirits, that in stone
in mountains old and wastes alone,
do dwell and wander, were his friends.
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