I had never seen a sunrise. I just didn’t see the point. Watching a sunrise would be just as exciting as watching a sunset, which, though pretty, wasn’t exactly a novel sight. Then there was the problem of getting up early enough to catch even the last rays of color before the sky turned into a dull blue backdrop. But when I finally caught sight of my first sunrise, it was magical. That’s because it was set above a mirror of clear, crystal waves advancing one by one along the shoreline. My first sight of the sea.        What met my eyes was a crystal cloud displayed like glass, accented with rays of light trying to escape from its overbearing presence. I saw the tide leaving the shore, the retreating waves crashing inwards in some feeble show of resistance. I saw the deep blue waves, not only blue, but many colors both reflecting and drawing out the sunrise above. To say it made an impression would be an understatement. Tolkien’s elves experience similar feelings for the

J.R.R. Tolkien stood in a “woodland glade filled with hemlocks” in Yorkshire England, where he was serving in the army and recovering from trench fever in 1972. His wife Edith was with him, and there she started dancing, leaving the memory deep within his conscience. That experience evolved into the first epic of Middle Earth, Beren and Lúthien. “She was the source of the story that in time would become the chief part of the Silmarillion ” (Letters 420). Indeed, it’s not hard to find parallels between the story of two lovers and Tolkien’s own life. However, it was hardly the first time (or the last) that his experiences made their way into his writing. The story of Beren and Lúthien features Beren, a man, who discovers Lúthien, an immortal elf, dancing in a “woodland glade” and falls in love with her. However, the lovers’ plight is doomed since her father decreed they cannot get married until Beren recaptures one of the Silmarils, a hopeless task, from the crown of Morgoth, the dar