Hello and welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Tuesday, March 5th, 2004. Today's poem is by J.R.R. Tolkien, although he might say today's poem is by Bilbo Baggins. That's because today's poem is The Road Goes Ever On, or Bilbo's Walking Song.

There really exist several versions of this song that appear throughout Tolkien's works.

The first is in The Hobbit where it is composed and sung by Bilbo Baggins after his long journey there and back again.

But then different versions of that song show up again in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, sometimes sung by Bilbo and sometimes sung by others.

Taken together, the different versions of the song serve as a nice metaphor for setting out on the

reading or the writing of a story. also for the journey through this life,

and even imagine this,

before setting out upon a journey, traveling down the road.

I will be reading all of these various versions today.

How could I not?

This is the first from The Hobbit.

Bilbo sings this song at the end of his travels

when he has journeyed to the lonely mountain,

seen the death of Smauk and the burial of his friend Thorin-Oakenshield,

and finally crested the last hill between himself and Hobbiton in the Shire.

And he sings,

Roads go ever, ever on, over rock and under tree,

by caves where never sun has shone, by streams that never find the sea, over snow by winter sown,

and through the merry flowers of June, over grass and over stone, and under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever, ever on, under cloud and under star, yet feet that wandering have gone,

turn at last to home afar.

Eyes that fire and sword have seen,

...