I hope that all the 37 people who viewed this thread, even though they mostly didn't post here, did nevertheless enter themselves on the congrats list!
but being a cheerful hobbit he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed.
I just like reading the list and finding entries from people from all over the world who are grateful to Tolkien, too, or want to honour him or remember him - I mean, in a way I find that on a Tolkien messageboard, too, but the birthday toast is even more universal, I think - and I like being a part of that, that's why I've always signed it in the past three or four years.
I'm just always a bit astonished that I hardly ever see a name that I know from any messageboard on that list - hence the advertisement.
Glad you'll be drinking a toast, though!
but being a cheerful hobbit he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed.
I don't know TrueHeartedEasterling at all. I know some of the folks from the German Tolkien Society who usually sign.
I've got to go back and see if I find more names I know after having had the thread up for a bit now!
but being a cheerful hobbit he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
I'm so glad you bumped this -- I had completely forgotten.
And it is said by the Eldar that in the water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance else that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the sea, and yet know not what for what they listen.
How many others have written a work that can sustain being discussed so intensely for so long by so many people from so many different places; that can be loved by scholars and by teenagers; in which new things can always be found, so the teenagers can grow old loving it; that has brought such beauty into colorless or desperate lives, and shored so many people up against despair?
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Yet another birthday for the great J.R.R. Tolkien. May his words live forever!
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
To J.R.R. Tolkien, with gratitude and appreciation that deepen by the year!
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
From the ashes, a fire shall be woken. A light from the shadow shall spring. Renewed shall be blade that was broken. The crownless again shall be king.