The Forgotten Inn

by Hoegard Harfoot
August 5, 2010

The rafters are open to sun, rain, and star,
Brigands and Blackwalds draw nigh in the bar.
The cellars are crumbling, the keg drafts are bad,
And vile goblins lurk near making the patrons all sad.
The voices are silent, no bustle or din,
For Shadow hath fallen on the Forgotten Inn.

Save the glimmer of stars, or the moon’s pallid beams,
And the howls of the wolves that in the hills teem.
The bar-room is dank and is covered in spills,
For the quick post comes so slow over Bree’s Hills.
Few riders push on through the darkness to win
The rest and the comfort of the Forgotten Inn.

I drift from my rhyme, for my memory strays
To the drinking and racing, of the Bullroarer’s days.
Far back to the seasons that I love the best,
When a troop of bold dwarves rushed into the west.
But the ‘rushes’ grew feeble, and sluggish, and thin,
Till scarcely a Dourhand passes the Forgotten Inn.

Do you think, my kinsman (if it’s thinking you be),
Of the days when you stamped through the Breelands with me?
Do you think of the day of our Midgewater tramp,
When never a fire could we light in the camp.
And, weary and footsore and drenched to the skin,
We trudged through the swamps to the Forgotten Inn?

Then you had a sweetheart and I had a wife,
And the Shire was never aware of the strife;
But we solemnly swore, ere that adventure was done,
That we’d never return till our fortunes were won.
Next morning to harvests of folly and sin
We tramped o’er the Lone-lands from the Forgotten Inn.

The days have come down all into the west,
And there a gray pilgrim rides seeking some rest,
And faint ‘neath the weight of his rain-sodden load,
He suddenly thinks of the inn by the road.
He tramps through the darkness the shelter to win,
And reaches the ruins of the Forgotten Inn.