JRR Tolkien
(1892-1973)
All That is Gold Does Not Glitter
All that is gold does not glitter,
All who wander are not lost;
The old that is strong does not whither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire will be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless shall again be king.
"All that glitters is not gold" is a notion some trace back as far as Aesop. It is plausible because it represents good common sense that many writers would capture. It is attested that the French monk Alain de Lille wrote "Do not hold everything gold that shines like gold" in 1175 CE. The current version of the saying is derived from a 16th-century line by William Shakespeare, "All that glisters is not gold"[1].
JRR Tolkien gave the euphemism an interesting twist in a poem which appears in his Ring Trilogy. In fact, he inverted the euphemism – from “All that glitters is not gold” to “All that is gold does not glitter.” At first glance they might seem to be two slightly different ways of saying the same thing. I don’t think that’s true.
Shakespeare’s line – All that glitters is not gold – offers good advice. Don’t run after every shiny thing is how we say it now. Some of those glittery things do not have value. They do not enhance our lives. Appearances are not the same as substance. This is solid advice, but it focuses on glittery things.
Tolkien’s line – All that is gold does not glitter – asserts that the real gold in this life, those things which truly enrich us, are often not things of worldly value like gold coins or other objects. He encourages us to look beneath the surface of things. Maybe those who wander are not lost. Maybe those who are old are also strong. Aspects of our lives which are deep-rooted, like loving friends and family and devotion to duty, are not vulnerable to passing challenges – the frost of our lives.
The second quatrain reminds us there is a cycle in life which will bring new life from what first appeared to be loss – fire from ashes, light from shadows, renewal from brokenness, and, perhaps most hope-filled, that the humble will be exalted.
Here is how the poem/riddle appears in the context of Tolkien’s fantasy classic, The Fellowship of the Ring (part one of the Lord of the Rings trilogy).
The poem as a whole is a prophecy of Aragorn’s ascension from being a mistrusted and uncelebrated ranger in the North, to the recognition of his birthright as the king of Gondor and vanished Arnor.
The poem appears twice in The Lord of the Rings' first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring. It appears first in Chapter Ten, “Strider,” in Gandalf’s letter to the hobbits in Bree, before they know that Strider (Aragorn) is the subject of the verse. It 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.
In Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings for film, the poem appears in The Return of the King, when Arwen recites the last four lines of the poem as her father Elrond prepares to reforge the shards of Narsil for Aragorn. In the 1981 BBC radio dramatization, the entire poem is heard in its original context, the letter left at Bree by Gandalf.
Here's a professional reading of the poem.
[1] “Glisters” – this is not a typo. That is the spelling Shakespeare used. It has morphed over time to “glistens”.
Comments