R: These Are the Shortest, Gladdest Years of Life

Tuesday, May 2nd, 2023 at 8:00 p.m. in Room 201 of 220 York Street

Winslow Homer, Boys in a Pasture, 1874, oil on canvas, 40.32 x 58.1 cm, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston.

After a good while the eagles must have seen the point they were making for, even from their great height, for they began to go down circling round in great spirals. They did this for a long while, and at last the hobbit opened his eyes again. The earth was much nearer, and below them were trees that looked like oaks and elms, and wide grass lands, and a river running through it all. But cropping out of the ground, right in the path of the stream which looped itself about it, was a great rock, almost a hill of stone, like a last outpost of the distant mountains, or a huge piece cast miles into the plain by some giant among giants.


Quickly now to the top of this rock the eagles swooped one by one and set down their passengers.


“Farewell!” they cried, “wherever you fare, till your eyries receive you at the journey’s end!” That is the polite thing to say among eagles.


“May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks,” answered Gandalf, who knew the correct reply.


- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again