The First Sentence of 'The Lay of the Children of Húrin'

Lo! the golden dragon   of the God of Hell, 

the gloom of the woods   of the world now gone, 

the woes of Men,   and weeping of Elves 

fading faintly   down forest pathways,

is now to tell,   and the name most tearful           5 

of Níniel the sorrowful,   and the name most sad

of Thalion’s son Túrin   o’erthrown by fate.

                (The Lays of Beleriand 5) 

What really got me to stop and look more closely at the first seven lines of The Lay of the Children of Húrin was a question: Does 'fading', the first word in line 4, modify 'weeping' or 'Elves'? Is it the sound of the Elves' weeping which is fading, or is it the Elves themselves who are fading? That, after all, is something they are known to do, an exceptionally important part of the Doom of the Elves. It's also true that the two other participles in these lines, 'gone' (2) and 'o'erthrown' (7) must be taken closely with the nouns, 'world' (2) and 'son Túrin (7), just before them, as 'Elves' is just before 'fading.' On the basis of these two points I am much more inclined to take 'fading' with 'Elves' than with 'weeping.'

But while I was considering this, I noticed something I find much more interesting in the structure of the sentence, which has six subjects, four before and two after the verb phrase -- 'is now to tell'. The first four are the dragon of Morgoth, the gloom of a lost world, and the sufferings of Men and Elves within that world. Having set forth the particular agents of the general misfortunes of the two kindreds in that lost world, the sentence then pivots on the verb, like a lever on a fulcrum, to name the particular victims, Níniel and Túrin, whose sorrows are the focus of this lay. Lines 1 and 7, moreover, enclose the whole, opposing the dragon and Túrin as well as the figures of Morgoth and Húrin whose conflict shapes the unfolding of the tale they watch from afar. The reference to fate and the description of Morgoth as 'the God of Hell' also serve to tie this tale into the larger themes of the problem of Evil and its relationship to the plan of Ilúvatar which Tolkien saw as fundamental from the beginning of his legendarium.

It's a very nice little package to introduce the Great Tale and link it intimately to what we might call the Great Themes, a unity further underscored by the six subjects with a singular verb.*

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* An alternate reading would be to construe the six words I take as the collective subject of 'is' (in one big noun clause) as the objects of 'tell.' It may also simply be that 'is' takes its number from that of the nearest subject, which doesn't happen often in English of late, but Tolkien knew any number of languages in which it did.