Page 82 of The Fellowship of the Ring

feat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.'

'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo.

'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. And already, Frodo, our time is beginning to look black. The Enemy is fast becoming very strong. His plans are far from ripe, I think, but they are ripening. We shall be hard put to it. We should be very hard put to it, even if it were not for this dreadful chance.

'The Enemy still lacks one thing to give him strength and knowledge to beat down all resistance, break the last defences, and cover all the lands in a second darkness. He lacks the One Ring.

'The Three, fairest of all, the Elf-lords hid from him, and his hand never touched them or sullied them. Seven the Dwarf-kings possessed, but three he has recovered, and the others the dragons have consumed. Nine he gave to Mortal Men, proud and great, and so ensnared them. Long ago they fell under the dominion of the One, and they became Ringwraiths, shadows under his great Shadow, his most terrible servants. Long ago. It is many a year since the Nine walked abroad. Yet who knows? As the Shadow grows once more, they too may walk again. But come! We will not speak of such things even in the morning of the Shire.

'So it is now: the Nine he has gathered to himself; the Seven also, or else they are destroyed. The Three are hidden still. But that no longer troubles him. He only needs the One; for he made that Ring himself, it is his, and he let a great part of his own former power pass into it, so that he could rule all the others. If he recovers it, then he will command them all again, wherever they be, even the Three, and all that has been wrought with them will be laid bare, and he will be stronger than ever.

'And this is the dreadful chance, Frodo. He believed that the One had perished; that the Elves had destroyed it, as should have been done. But he knows now that it has


(From the 1974 edition)

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My Review:

Can you get much better than this page? Let's say all you know is that it's from the series The Lord of the Rings. Here, by sheer luck, is the page that tells you what the Lord of the Rings is. Not only that, but five sentences in, you get to one of the best sentences ever written: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." In a handful of paragraphs, Gandalf lays out a vast sweep of history, and also lets you know that some very bad news is going down in the present. The language is poetic, but the sense of threat is real, and as you get to the end of the page, you're speared on the hook of an incomplete sentence that promises to tell you even more about how bad our good guys have it, thanks to the nameless Enemy learning whatever it is he's learned.

Pure magic.