All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
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.
For many years Andy and I have enjoyed this quote, in fact, we stenciled it on a wall in our home on Carriage House Ct. I knew only that it came from Lord of the Rings. I did not know the whole context or even the whole poem.
As I started this blog, to document our adventures in getting to London, being in London, and going to other places from London; the line kept coming back to me, we are wandering – we are not lost.
So, to start on the right foot, the entire poem must be cited here. Note that additional information below is taken from Wikipedia.
The poem appears twice in The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings. It appears first in Chapter Ten, “Strider”, in Gandalf’s letter to Frodo Baggins in Bree, although when Frodo reads it he does not realize that Strider (Aragorn) is the subject of the verse.
The verse is repeated by Bilbo at the Council of Elrond. He whispers to Frodo that he wrote it many years before, when Aragorn first revealed who he was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_that_is_gold_does_not_glitter