Strange to Us

Voice of stone in my soul. They are gone. They are gone.

Gone across a sea I have never seen. How could they bear to leave, when the world is so fair? Leave new grass to sprout, new trees to spring from seed, grow to sapling and towering giant, never savoring their greenness? Leave their works of creation to fall into ruin? Leave, knowing even the bedrock will mourn them?

Old as I now realize I am, with these younglings for companions, still I am only beginning to learn to love this Middle-Earth. I do not ever want to leave.