| O fading town upon an island hill,
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| Old shadows linger in thine ancient gate,
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| Thy robe is grey, thine old heart now is still;
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| Thy towers silent in the mist await their crumbling end
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| While through the storeyed elms
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| The gliding black water leaves these inland realms,
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| And slips between long meadows to the Sea,
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| Still bearing downward over murmurous falls
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| One day and then another to the Sea
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| And slowly thither many years have gone
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| All thy trees, Kortirion, were bent,
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| And shook with sudden whispering lament:
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| For passing were the days, and doomed the nights
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| When flittering ghost-moths danced round
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| tapers in the moveless air nighttime
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| And doomed already were the radiant dawns,
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| The odour and the noise of meads,
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| when all thy trees were bent, and shook with sudden whispering lament
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| And slowly thither many years have gone
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| since first the elves here built ancient, renowned Kortirion |