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'Dwarves, Men and Elves,
terrible Elves with bright eyes.' |
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'He has a mind of metal and
wheels.' |
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One felt as if there was an
enormous well behind them, filled up with ages of memory and long,
slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present
-- like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the
ripples of a very deep lake. |
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'I don't know,' said Frodo
in a dreamlike voice. 'But I have seen them too. In the pools when
the candles were lit. They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep,
deep under the dark water. I saw them: grim faces and evil, and noble
faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver
hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead. A fell light is in them.' |
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Ithilien, the garden of Gondor
now desolate kept still a dishevelled dryad loveliness. |
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And thymes that grew in bushes,
or with their woody creeping stems, mantled in deep tapestries the
hidden stones. |
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Presently, it brought them
to a small clear lake in a shallow dell: it lay in the broken ruins
of an ancient stone basin, the carven rim of which was almost wholly
covered with mosses and rose-brambles; iris-swords stood in ranks
about it, and water-lily leaves floated on its dark, gently rippling
surface. |
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It waded deep, as if it were
heavily burdened, and it seemed to me as it passed under my gaze that
it was almost filled with clear water from which came the light; and
lapped in the water a warrior lay asleep. |
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Sam had noticed that at times
a light seemed to be shining faintly within; but now the light was
even clearer and stronger. Frodo's face was peaceful, the marks of
fear and care had left it; but it looked old, old and beautiful, as
if the chiselling of the shaping years was now revealled in many fine
lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face
was not changed. Not that Sam Gamgee put it that way himself. He shook
his head, as if finding words useless, and murmered: 'I love him.
He's like that, and sometimes it shines through, somehow. But I love
him whether or no.' |
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Wide flats lay on either bank,
shadowy meads filled with pale white flowers. Luminous these were
too, beautiful and yet horrible of shape, like the demented forms
in an uneasy dream; and they gave forth a faint sickening charnell-smell;
an odour of rottenness filled the air. From mead to mead the bridge
sprang. Figures stood there at its head, carven with cunning in forms
unhuman and bestial, but all corrupt and loathsome. The water flowing
beneath was silent, and it steamed, but the vapour that rose from
it, curling and twisting about the bridge, was deadly cold. |
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