This week’s choice is “The Hoard” by J.R.R. Tolkien which I have chosen (a week late) for my birthday. Apologies to everyone who missed Poet’s Day last week—it is the first time I have missed it in five years of writing.
Greed that sang not, nor with mouth smiled,
J.R.R.Tolkien (1893—1973
in dark holes their wealth piled,
graven silver and carven gold:
over Elvenhome the shadow rolled.
Poem 399. Iúmonna Gold Galdre Bewunden (The Hoard)
When the moon was new and the sun young
of silver and gold the gods sung:
in the green grass they silver spilled,
and the white waters they with gold filled.
Ere the pit was dug or Hell yawned,
ere dwarf was bred or dragon spawned,
there were Elves of old, and strong spells
under green hills in hollow dells
they sang as they wrought many fair things,
and the bright crowns of the Elf-kings.
But their doom fell, and their song waned,
by iron hewn and by steel chained.
Greed that sang not, nor with mouth smiled,
in dark holes their wealth piled,
graven silver and carven gold:
over Elvenhome the shadow rolled.
There was an old dwarf in a dark cave,
to silver and gold his fingers clave;
with hammer and tongs and anvil-stone
he worked his hands to the hard bone.
and coins he made, and strings of rings,
and thought to buy the power of kings.
But his eyes grew dim and his ears dull
and the skin yellow on his old skull;
through his bony claw with a pale sheen
the stony jewels slipped unseen.
No feet he heard, though the earth quaked.
when the young dragon his thirst slaked.
and the stream smoked at his dark door.
The flames hissed on the dank floor,
and he died alone in the red fire;
his bones were ashes in the hot mire.
There was an old dragon under grey stone;
his red eyes blinked as he lay alone.
His joy was dead and his youth spent,
he was knobbed and wrinkled, and his limbs bent
in the long years to his gold chained;
in his heart’s furnace the fire waned.
To his belly’s slime gems stuck thick,
silver and gold he would snuff and lick:
he knew the place of the least ring
beneath the shadow of his black wing.
Of thieves he thought on his hard bed,
and dreamed that on their flesh he fed,
their bones crushed, and their blood drank:
his ears drooped and his breath sank.
Mail-rings rang. He heard them not.
A voice echoed in his deep grot:
a young warrior with a bright sword
called him forth to defend his hoard.
His teeth were knives, and of horn his hide,
but iron tore him, and his flame died.
There was an old king on a high throne:
his white beard lay on knees of bone;
his mouth savoured neither meat nor drink,
nor his ears song; he could only think
of his huge chest with carven lid
where pale gems and gold lay hid
in secret treasury in the dark ground;
its strong doors were iron-bound.
The swords of his thanes were dull with rust,
his glory fallen, his rule unjust,
his halls hollow, and his bowers cold,
but king he was of elvish gold.
He heard not the horns in the mountain-pass,
he smelt not the blood on the trodden grass,
but his halls were burned, his kingdom lost;
in a cold pit his bones were tossed.
There is an old hoard in a dark rock,
forgotten behind doors none can unlock;
that grim gate no man can pass.
On the mound grows the green grass;
there sheep feed and the larks soar,
and the wind blows from the sea-shore.
The old hoard the Night shall keep,
while earth waits and the Elves sleep.
This poem was published in three different versions—the first having the Old English title “Iúmonna Gold Galdre Bewunden” (taken from a line of verse in Beowulf: “The gold of men of long ago enmeshed in enchantment”) was published in 1923. It was revised and republished in 1937 under the same title, and then in 1962 as “The Hoard” in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses. The Hobbit was published in 1937 and The Lord of the Rings in 1954–55 but Tolkien had begun constructing the world of Middle Earth in the 1910s before the advent of World War I, and by the time this poem was written, it seems that he had considered several key ideas that later appeared in The Silmarillion: the idea of Middle Earth being the incarnation of the song of its creator, the existence of elves, dwarves, dragons and men and their interlinked histories and the idea that treasure of any sort carries with it a glamour that seduces the brightest and bravest of souls.
Each stanza introduces another owner of the treasure: initially created by the gods, gold and silver are spread throughout the earth, and knowledge of their working passes to the elves, who weave mighty magic over them and make “many fair things/and the bright crowns of the Elf-kings”. Their joy turns to sorrow as “Greed that sang not, nor with mouth smiled/in dark holes their wealth piled”—we see Tolkien’s conception of the elves as a serious folk, capable of footless merriment as much as grasping avarice. At the end of the stanza their treasure is piled “in dark holes” and the elves take no further interest in it.
The second stanza introduces the dwarves, and they are portrayed as master metalsmiths and jewellers, working the metal bequeathed by the elves into coins and rings and similar trinkets that bred in their creator an ambition to “buy the power of kings”. In time, however, he grows old and his faculties decay so that he can no longer see to work his art or count his riches; nor is he able to hear the dragon as it arrives, and the reward for his greed is to be burned alive as his treasure is claimed by the scaly intruder.
We switch then to the dragon in its old age, his puissance waning as the years settle upon him. We see that dragons are in general closely tied to their plundered riches, a theme that is amplified in The Hobbit when Bilbo first catches sight of Smaug’s hoard:
“There he lay, a vast red-golden dragon, fast asleep; thrumming came from his jaws and nostrils, and wisps of smoke, but his fires were low in slumber. Beneath him, under all his limbs and his huge coiled tail, and about him on all sides stretching away across the unseen floors, lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver red-stained in the ruddy light. Smaug lay, with wings folded like an immeasurable bat, turned partly on one side, so that the hobbit could see his underparts and his long pale belly crusted with gems and fragments of gold from his long lying on his costly bed.”
The Hobbit, “Inside Information”
The dragon in this poem is long past his glory days by the time we come to his stanza and the fire that broiled his dwarvish predecessor has largely dissipated but nonetheless he retains the traditional draconic avarice: he knows “the place of the least ring/beneath the shadow of his black wing” and dreams of disposing of thieves in the same way as he originally claimed the treasure; as is often the case, reality and his dreams have little in common and for all his self-deceit, he is a poor shadow of his former glory: “his ears drooped and his breath stank”. Like the dwarf before him, he fails to hear the auguries of his doom as a young warrior with much to prove challenges and bests him.
Once again the pages of the calendar tear off and fall away like leaves in autumn and we can see the “young warrior with a bright sword” in his old age, disrespected by his subjects and the nobility, his mind filled only with thoughts of the “secret treasury” “where pale gems and gold lay hid” and caring nothing for his despotism and ignominious state as long as “king he was of elvish gold.”
Like the elves, the dwarf and the dragon before him, he thinks overmuch of his treasure and heeds not the warning signs and the sounds of revolution that accompany his downfall, his remains are hurled dishonourably into a common grave and forgotten and the secret that grants access to the hoard is likewise forgotten so that it rests in silence, unknown to the grass growing above and the larks soaring across the sky as the sea soughs on the shore, until the end comes and the elves reawaken.
This poem could be interpreted as an expression of the central theme of much of the Silmarillion: greed drove Fëanor and his sons to forsake an idyllic existence and set every house of the Elves at odds with each other; greed—fostered and instigated by Sauron—led to the fall of Númenor (the Atlantis legend of Middle Earth), greed engendered the Ring Wraiths and strengthened Barad-Dûr, greed drew Smeagol (Gollum) to the Ring, and greed eventually tempted Frodo as he teetered on the edge of destruction to abandon his quest and take the Ring for his own. We see also the destruction of the hero Boromir through his greed for the Ring at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring.
By contrast, Gandalf and Galadriel successfully resist the temptations of the Ring, being driven by other (and higher) ideals than greed, and Tom Bombadil is totally immune to its blandishments, being absorbed in his own parochial idyll and desiring nothing outside. Sam Gamgee also refuses the Ring, though his abstinence is driven by his humility rather than a high ideal.
It is interesting that the poem mentions elves and men, named in The Silmarillion as “The Children of Ilúvatar” and dwarves and dragons. There is no mention of hobbits (or halflings) and I am not sure whether this is accidental in the sense that Tolkien had not considered hobbits and their impact on Middle Earth during the events of the War of the Ring, or if it is intentional and we see here an early suggestion from the author of the incorruptibility of his popular protagonists.
The message of the poem is clear: regardless of one’s initially pure intentions, treasure has a glamour about it that is liable to corrupt and destroy the best of us. Each of the stanzas shows that irrespective of the reasons for claiming a treasure such as this, we may still come to an unceremonious and humiliating end. Perhaps those who seek power in the modern age could benefit from remembering this tale.
I’ve always rather liked this poem because I listened to Tolkien’s performance of it on a tape cassette many years ago and I was much struck by it at the time, and I find its message refreshing at a time when the pursuit of riches and fame seems to have largely trumped normal and rational behaviour.
There are several performances on YouTube, most of which are rebadged versions of Tolkien’s performance for an LP version. The Professor Tolkien Reads version is as good as any of them.