grey ship, grey ship, do you hear them calling

[incandescens]

Back at work. No dramatic disasters in my absence, which is good. Team leader has a number of things that she wants to talk with me about with respect to Stuff That Needs Doing, but given she was using phrases like "when we have time" and did not try to do so today, I think I will not worry about tomorrow's evil until tomorrow arrives.

Have finished quilt top for second dinosaur quilt (for another coworker who requested it for her great-nephew on seeing the HISHAMOSAURUS version). Just need to quilt and bind it now, so must get a metre and a half of wadding tomorrow. (Let me see: (6 inches) + (4 x 2 inches) + (4 x 10 inches) = 54 inches - yes, five feet of wadding should be enough for it.) Have also had fabrics approved for quilt top for great-niece of said coworker, which is to involve the Flower Fairies and butterflies, as well as her name. (There are some quite decent small fabric panels of the Cicely Mary Barker flower fairies available.) So that's my evenings for the next few weeks.

Plenty to be getting on with.

---

To the Sea, to the Sea! The white gulls are crying,
The wind is blowing, and the white foam is flying.
West, west away, the round sun is falling.
Grey ship, grey ship, do you hear them calling,
The voices of my people that have gone before me?
I will leave, I will leave the woods that bore me;
For our days are ending and our years failing.
I will pass the wide waters lonely sailing.
Long are the waves on the Last Shore falling,
Sweet are the voices in the Lost Isle calling,
In Eressea, in Elvenhome that no man can discover,
Where the leaves fall not: land of my people forever!

-- Legolas, in The Return of the King, JRR Tolkien

Comments

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The elves going over the seas have always given me a frisson that I can't explain. Possibly because at 16 I didn't get the idea that they were going to a really happy place. I think I had the idea that going west means either ending up in Ireland or dying. Which means going to heaven, but heaven's a pretty abstract notion. And whatever, the melancholy of leaving Middle Earth is still the strongest impression left.

[incandescens]

Melancholy really is the best word for that song and for the whole image and the Grey Havens and all of it: but it's the sort of melancholy that's really hard to convey without becoming overdone or sentimental.

[archangelbeth]

*can't get the .hack//SIGN music out of her head now*
"can you hear the calling / of the raging wind and water..."

[incandescens]

(laughs)

Though ultimately, Legolas wasn't going out to adventure. He was going "home".

[archangelbeth]

*nod* That particular song is... not entirely about adventure, and more about being lost, I think.

[incandescens]

True, I think you're right. (It's been a while since I watched it...)