Henneth Annûn Story Archive

1) Greater Love Red lips are not so red     As the stained stones kissed by the English dead. Kindness of wooed and wooer Seems shame to their love pure. O Love, your eyes lose lure     When I behold eyes blinded in my stead! Your slender attitude     Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed, Rolling and rolling there Where God seems not to care; Till the fierce Love they bear     Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude. Your voice sings not so soft, --     Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft, -- Your dear voice is not dear, Gentle, and evening clear, As theirs whom none now hear     Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed. Heart, you were never hot,     Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot; And though your hand be pale, Paler are all which trail Your cross through flame and hail:     Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not. Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918 This poem is interesting and problematic, as evidenced by this article: Greater Love: Wilfred Owen, Keats, and a Tradition of Desire. Owen was himself homosexual, and for him poetry was a highly figurative way for him to justify his own dangerous emotions. I don't want to slash Theodred, but I do want to address what would keep him from marriage even though he was well beyond the usual age for it among his people. (His father was married before he was 30; Theodred died at about 40 with no wife or heir on record.) This is not going to be the initial obvious presupposition, however. No. I intend to be more faithful to the poem than the poet possibly was himself. 2) "The Green Fields of France"

But here in this graveyard that is still No Man's land the countless white crosses in mute witness stand. To man's blind indifference to his fellow man to a whole generation that was butchered and damned.

Elfwine was raised in a peacetime Rohan. I wondered what the living king's son would think of the dead king's son's last moments. Would he find it meaningful? 3) "Roll With It" what if the enemy isn't in a distant land what if the enemy lies behind the voice of command the sound of war is a child's cry behind tinted windows, they just drive by all I know is that those who are going to be killed aren't those who preside on capitol hill I told him, don't fill the front lines of their war those assholes aren't worth dying for but he said roll with it, baby make it your career keep the home fires burning till america is in the clear I am tired of glorifying war, however. Most of the most poignant WWI poets concluded that it was not worth the sacrifice. I think a large part of Tolkien's fantasy is a struggle that is worth fighting. There is a side who is in the right, in his stories. Which is refreshing to contemplate, as like him I watch friends and family departing for a war I cannot overcome my cynicism to muster support for. The closest I can come in the Ardaverse is a woman of Rhun coming to terms with the fact that her husband died for less than a noble cause.

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