Old Grabbler is a poem by J.R.R. Tolkien part of his series Tales and Songs of Bimble Bay written around 1928. It was first published in The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien. There are two manuscripts of the poem, and the first was called Poor Old Grabbler. It is about two older residents, Mrs. Day and Grabbler, of Bimble Bay, an imaginary English seaside town. It is a somber poem that laments the degradation of the environment around them in their old age compared to their youth.
And Grabbler was young and followed after
And wandered in lands all clean and wild.'
But all these places are now defiled:
Everywhere, everywhere paper-bags,
And banana-skins, and yellowing rags
Of picture-papers, and stumps of fags;
And over dark hills the honk of horn.[1]
See also
References
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien; Christina Scull, Wayne G. Hammond (eds.), The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, "106. Poor Old Grabbler · Old Grabbler (?1928)", pp. 740-3