J.R.R. Tolkien wrote much else besides Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit – he was an Oxford scholar, with many articles and essays and, of course, poems, including one on today’s saint, Brendan the Navigator. We present here the first stanza:
At last out of the deep seas he passed,
and mist rolled on the shore;
under clouded moon the waves were loud,
as the laden ship him bore
to Ireland, back to wood and mire,
to the tower tall and grey,
where the knell of Cluian-ferta’s bell
tolled in the green Galway.
Where Shannon down to Lough Derg ran
under a rainclad sky
Saint Brendan came to his journey’s end
to await his hour to die.
For the rest of the poem, please see here.
