J. R. R. Tolkien's "Noel"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2024

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

J. R. R. Tolkien loved Christmas–we can find ample proof of this in his Letters From Father Christmas, but also in his choosing December 25 as the day the fellowship of the Ring should set out from Rivendell and begin the destruction of evil in Middle Earth. Today’s poem, once lost to history but rediscovered and included in his Collected Poems, is his most explicit tribute to the Nativity. Happy reading.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:05.0	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Tuesday, December 24th, 2024, Christmas Eve.
0:11.0	And our poem today is by J.R.R. Tolkien. It's called Noel, and it's a poem that was written in 1936, one year before Tolkien published The Hobbit, which would catapult him to international
0:24.8	literary fame.
0:26.4	And so at the time that he wrote this poem, he was still supplementing his teacher's income
0:30.8	by grading extra exam papers and working on the Oxford English Dictionary.
0:35.6	And for that reason, this poem, when it was initially
0:38.5	published in a small magazine, faded into obscurity and was only rediscovered partly by accident
0:46.1	within the last decade. This year, it was finally republished in the collected poems of J.R.R.
0:53.9	Tolkien, a beautiful three-volume collection
0:56.3	that carries a fairly high price tag, but is beautiful and is worth every penny you pay for it.
1:03.6	The poem has a beautiful musical quality, partly because it's written in the ballad meter or
1:08.8	common meter, and it would make a great Christmas carol or Christmas
1:12.5	hymn if some enterprising individual were to set it to music. It draws together many of the
1:18.3	great themes of the other Christmas poems that we've featured on the show in the last week or two,
1:24.9	but it does it all in the very recognizable and beloved voice of
1:30.0	J.R.R. Tolkien, complete with hallmarks of the Anglo-Saxon poetry he loved so much like
1:35.6	alliteration and even a sword or two. Here is J.R.R.R. Tolkien's Noelle.
1:50.8	Grim was the world and grey last night. The moon and the stars were fled. The hall was dark without song or light. The fires were fallen dead. The wind in the trees was like to the
1:56.9	sea, and over the mountain's teeth it whistled bitter coal and free, as a sword leapt from its sheath.
2:03.9	The lord of snows upreared his head, his mantle long and pale.
2:08.8	Upon the bitter blast was spread, and hung o'er hill and dale.
	...

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