My friend Susan, who is well versed in religious and epic texts in assorted languages of old, insists I would appreciate Tolkien's prose more if I were better read in Middle English and Icelandic. Every sentence I threw at her, she read smoothly, without batting an eye or stumbling over a single missing comma.
So I decided to continue on with open mind after the death of Smaug in Esgaroth by Bard's last and best-aimed arrow [<--see what I in the narrative, that unfolds within the improvisational mind, have learned about strings of prepositional phrases!]. Full on the next paragraph I fell, and read aloud with epic voice these sentences: [<--apologies for the colon, I'm new at this]
"[The wind] twisted the white fog into bending pillars and hurrying clouds and drove it off to the West to scatter in tattered shreds over the marshes before Mirkwood. Then the many boats could be seen dotted dark on the surface of the lake, and down the wind came...No, dagnabbit. Wait a sec...and down the wind came...and down the...Ah, got it...and down the wind...came the voices of the people of Esgaroth lamenting their lost town and goods and ruined houses."
Reading with the epic voice helps.
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