| A! Tollen gûr na Balannor Nu goll dhúath e-nathron dhonn Onethelais panna i nôr Gelaidh gelaid go linnod an Nestad. Ai nae úamdir dâr.
| O! Come is death to Valinor Under shadowy cloak of the dark weaver. Yavanna fills the place of the Trees of Light with a chant for Healing. Ah alas, no hope remains.
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| Harnannin athan nestad bân Telperion a Laurelin. In edhil sí awarthar Dhûn Farol i viriath corin E galad vedui o Aman.
| Wounded beyond all healing Are Telpirion and Laurelin. The elves there depart the west Seeking the jewels made From the last light of Aman.
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| I aear dholl. Saer dîn vanadh. Aphadar 'lîn e-fast i chîn Finarfin. Athradar athrad Chelegnen. Sí falas thrúnen. I ithil eria. Romru cân.
| The sea is dark. Bitter their fate. They follow the gleam of the hair of the children Of Finarfin. They cross the icy Passage. There is the eastern shore. The moon rises. Trumpets ring out.
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“The Mithril Awards were established to honour excellence in fiction, poetry and critical essays relating to The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion and other works by JRR Tolkien. All material freely available on the web in English is eligible for awards, regardless of rating, genre, subject matter, category and source (book or movie), with the exception of actor fic/RPS.”
For about a month this spring, web users could nominate works they found online, submitting the nominations through the Mithril Award's form on its website. I was told in an email that entries had to be nominated more than once for the same category to be considered, and that there were over six hundred nominations.
This was my second Elvish poem and my first in meter. I wrote it first in Sindarin, so the English ‹the only part being judged‹ is simply the translation. Writing Sindarin limits one's vocabulary, grammar, and imagery severely, since Tolkien never fully worked out the language, left us with large gaps, and frequently contradicted himself or changed his mind over the years. There may still be mistakes or better ways of phrasing than my clumsy attempts; so, mellyn nín, if any of you have corrections, you know where to find me!