The Beauty of The English Language

English to me has a special quality. When reading certain verse, it really makes the bones tingle. It can be particularly onomatopoeic and lyrical even in prose. The epitome of these qualities, for me, are the works of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973), who reinvented the idea of Anglo-Saxon mythology and revolutionized the world of fantasy by setting it within an almost divine and definitely Catholic framework. The Old English style and rhythm really beat a pulse into the reader's mind. Consider the following stanza from his 1937 novel, The Hobbit:
Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold.

Or the following example from the same book:

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep where dark things sleep
In hollow halls beneath the fells.

Or something just with less power, yet more beauty from The Silmarillion:

Lúthien Tinúviel
more fair than mortal tongue can tell.
Though all to ruin fell the world
and were dissolved and backward hurled
unmade into the old abyss,
yet were its making good, for this—
the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea—
that Lúthien for a time should be.

Inspiring? Certainly! And this from a man whose ideals motivated the emergence of my own. I live by The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. Any Monarchist, Anarchist, or Catholic worth a damn should read his works and feel the power of those words. Aside from the amazing imagery the books also offer lessons in ethics and morality. Even in The Hobbit, which is commonly referred to as a children's tale, rather difficult ethical dilemmas appear. Did Bilbo Baggins have the right to the Arkenstone of Thrain? Did the Elven king behave properly upon encountering the Dwarves in his lands? These are questions we might all benefit from analyzing. All important themes are looked upon: loyalty, authority, power, risk, friendship, piety, strength of will...

To finish on a high note, here is another brilliant piece from none other than The Hobbit:
Alive without breath,
As cold as death;
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail never clinking
What is it?