I just spent a couple hours on Facebook arguing about the relationships amongst Sauron and the Balrogs over the course of the First and Third Ages. This convinces me that it is time for a nerd contest. The contest for to-day is favorite Tolkien passages. So, what’s your favorite passage from the works of J.R.R. Tolkien? (Favorite in whatever sense you like.) Post it in the comments or on your own blog.

Note 1. Any work from the hand of J.R.R. Tolkien will do.^[1]

Note 2. It is perfectly O.K. to have more than one favorite. I sure do.

Note 3. Feel free to post it with, or without, anything you might want to say about why it’s your favorite.

Note 4. If you hate Tolkien, or just don’t care about Tolkien, or just aren’t feeling it today, post your favorite passage from something else at least equally nerdy.

Here’s one of mine. I’ll probably have more to post in the comments, but The Silmarillion is what was ready at hand, so there is this.

But H?@c3;ba;rin did not look at the stone, for he knew what was written there; and his eyes had seen that he was not alone. Sitting in the shadow of the stone there was a woman, bent over her knees; and as H?@c3;ba;rin stood there silent she cast back her tattered hood and lifted her face. Grey she was and old, but suddenly her eyes looked into his, and he knew her; for though they were wild and full of fear, that light still gleamed in them that long ago had earned her the name Eledhwen, proudest and most beautiful of mortal women in the days of old.

You come at last, she said. I have waited too long.

It was a dark road. I have come as I could, he answered.

But you are too late, said Morwen. They are lost.

I know it, he said. But you are not.

But Morwen said, Almost. I am spent. I shall go with the sun. Now little time is left: if you know, tell me! How did she find him?

But H?@c3;ba;rin did not answer, and they sat beside the stone, and did not speak again; and when the sun went down Morwen sighed and clasped his hand, and was still; and H?@c3;ba;rin knew that she had died.

–J.R.R. Tolkien (1977/1999), The Silmarillion, Ch. 22 Of the Ruin of Doriath, p. 229.

1. ^[1]Including the ones that were redacted by Christopher Tolkien; whether canonical, deuterocanonical, or apocryphal.↩