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On 18 January 1934, The Oxford Magazine published Tolkien's poem titled "Looney". Tolkien later revised it with new title "The Sea-Bell (Frodos Dreme)", with a tone much darker and full of longing than the previous version.
: Anna Kulisz
: Anna Kulisz
In the poem, a stranger found a white shell shaped like a sea-bell. When he put it on his ears, he heard the distant sounds of harbors and the seas. A mysterious, beautiful ship came and took him to a strange land where the inhabitants fled upon seeing him.
: Alan Lee
: Alan Lee
He climbed a mound and made himself a king, but darkness descended upon him, turning him "blinded and bent." He dwelt in the forest "wandering in wit", growing old and weary. A year and a day later, the ship returned and he boarded it to his own land.
When the stranger returned to the same beach , he found the same shell, but he could no longer hear the sounds of harbors and seas, which made him cry. The poem ended with him walking along a dark, rainy street talking to himself "for still they speak not, men that I meet".
Tolkien himself didn't feel confident with this poem, but he touched many themes that frequently appear in his own works: mortality, the otherworld, alienation, desire, suffering, pride, the sea and nature.
W. H. Auden wrote to Tolkien, telling him it was wonderful, a fine poetic work. Tolkien replied that the praise "really made me wag my tail." Prof. Verlyn Flieger called it a cry of longing for lost beauty, relating it it to the alienation Tolkien's generation felt after the war.
The words "Frodos Dreme", which were later scrawled at the head of the poem, suggesting that Frodo might write it, representing the inherent distrust for the Sea, the "wandering-madness", and anything that was not part of the Shire.
The poem also mentions "gladdon-swords guarded the fords". Gladdon-swords refer to the leaves of yellow irises, which gave the echo of Gladden Fields, a marshy area where Isildur met his death (yellow irises grow near ponds, streams, waterways, and wet woodlands).
