This poem grew from a little stanza I made up on the spot upon meeting someone for the first time in the wilderness. (Hence why the first stanza is somewhat rocky, but I didn't want to change it!) It is a riddle with no answer, designed to make the yearning for wilderness spring up in even the stoutest Hobbit's heart when sung by an elf...
Oh who wanders in the wilderness? Returning or lost, seeking or finding?
Who sings under stars and the moonlight, who follows the river winding?
Who sleeps in the river-fern's arms, who rises with sunlight's first warmth?
Who travels beneath sun and stars, and white daylight blinding?
Who roams to the north and the south, who travels outcast and alone?
Who plays in the mires and plains, who makes the forests their home?
In deepest vales and great heights, in shining days and dark nights,
Whose blankets are snow and the sky, whose pillow cold stone?
Who wakes when the sun melts the snow, returns with the birds of the spring,
Walks in the summer's cruel heat, sings as the summer rains sing?
Smiles with the harvest's fruit blushing, dances with autumn storms rushing,
Huddles in bare fields for warmth, feels winter's cold sting?
To whom is the hearth but a song, to whom is a home but a tale?
Who would in their heart bind no love but for the wilderness trail?
Who enters but only to leave, who will no shelter receive?
To whom would the four walls of home make only a jail?
Yet who loves the wilderness stark, as cruel and as hard as it is,
Who loves the sun and the stars, shining in Elbereth's bliss?
The bright rivers springing, the mountain-winds singing,
The smallest new leaf on the tree, the deepest abyss?
The rolling green landscape below, the sun as the storm-clouds above,
The proud and free flight of the hawk, the frightened shy call of the dove,
The light and the darkness, the richness and starkness,
The nameless wild wanderer and you, will you share their love?
