"From the ashes..."

“From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.”

Liv Tyler voiced these words

in Peter Jackson's "Return of the King,"

and they became a kind of hope,

embodied in the physicality of ash.

A hope all woven through with sorrow,

the kind of hope that does not end

even when Frodo's wounds

never fully healed.

As Ulmo said to Tuor before “The Fall of Gondolin,”

"...in the armour of Fate...there is ever a rift,

and in the walls of Doom a breach, until the full-making....

a light where darkness was decreed."

Hope that remembers in the face of “reckless hate,”

that there are lights beyond the shadow's reach,

and that would make an end “worthy of remembrance.”

Or as Tolkien wrote in “Mythopoeia,”

“Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme....

They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,

and yet they would not in despair retreat,

but oft to victory have tuned the lyre

and kindled hearts with legendary fire,

illuminating Now and dark Hath-been

with light of suns as yet by no man seen.”

The occurrence of which

in “On Fairy-stories” Tolkien named

“eucatastrophe...sudden and miraculous grace:

never to be counted on to recur.”

And clung to as Sam watched Frodo's ship fade into the west

“...the evening deepened to darkness as he stood...

hearing only the sigh and murmur of the waves

...and the sound of them sank deep into his heart....”