On 29 January 2024, a guest-post to the Tales after Tolkien Society blog featured Lancelot Schaubert’s “Dear Tolkien Estate.” The poem is included in Dennis Wilson Wise’s series on new alliterative poets, and Wise comments at some length on the structure of the poem, itself. In truth, I don’t know that I have anything to add to his discussion of it, unless maybe to find something of Milton in it–the final line, “Pendragon’s poem I dare to complete” is, to my ear, a lesser echo of the claim that Paradise Lost will “soar / Above th’ Aonian mount…/[…]/And justify the ways of God to men” (1.13-26). I am certain, however, that others will be able to say more than is given to me quite at the moment.

I agree with Wise that the poem is good, both in itself and as an example of the kind of thing done by the poets of the alliterative revival / survival (there is some suggestion that the alliterative form preferred by early English poetry persisted in one way or another throughout the period in which it has traditionally been held to have lapsed; the dearth of records does not exclude the possibility, and it is not likely that a long-standing mode of transmission was given up altogether), I note that it does clearly mark out its expected primary and secondary audiences. The title and the final stanza attend to the former, particularly; the subject matter, invoking Arthuriana and Tolkien’s Legendarium, suggest that the kind of nerd I am is the anticipated secondary readership.

Being the kind of nerd I am, I read the poem and am motivated to my own response; Schaubert ain’t the only one who gets to do this kind of thing:

Through ages has Arthur attracted attention,
Gathered since Gildas glory, acclaim
Known well to Nennius and noted, too, in
Galfridian Gloucester-praise that might be a game.
The man bound, Malory, mated together
The tales that were told across times and lands,
Put together in prison the parchments’ burdens,
Set them where Spenser could sing to his queen,
Hortatory halted but heard down the years.
The Professor, peerless in popular eyes,
Put his pen to the praise of the one who pulled
The sword from the stone in the yard of St. Paul’s,
One of nine worthies. That work went unfinished,
As was seen to sorrow; it stands not alone
As titles can tell us. The truth is
No story or song is ever full-settled;
How many have told of the husband of Guinevere,
How many speak yet of the son of Uther,
Not all in accord about Agravain’s uncle?
The works of giants yet left in the world
Show there was more than is now to be seen;
Who would be like them must well show the work
The passage of years performs. Praise is not withheld
From the soup of which the stock’s source is unseen.
But if it will be that the book is completed,
The talent assembled and talk well taken,
Let one who loves it do the labor.

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