Goblin Feet [Italian translation]

I am off down the road

Where the fairy lanterns glowed

And the little pretty flitter-mice are flying;

A slender band of gray

It runs creepily away

And the hedges and the grasses are a-sighing.

The air is full of wings,

And of blundery beetle-things

That warn you with their whirring and their humming.

O! I hear the tiny horns

Of enchanted leprechauns

And the padded feet of many gnomes a-coming!

O! the lights! O! the gleams! O! the little twinkly sounds!

O! the rustle of their noiseless little robes!

O! the echo of their feet — of their happy little feet!

O! the swinging lamps in the starlit globes.

I must follow in their train

Down the crooked fairy lane

Where the coney-rabbits long ago have gone.

And where silvery they sing

In a moving moonlit ring

All a twinkle with the jewels they have on.

They are fading round the turn

Where the glow worms palely burn

And the echo of their padding feet is dying!

O! it’s knocking at my heart—

Let me go! let me start!

For the little magic hours are all a-flying.

O! the warmth! O! the hum! O! the colors in the dark!

O! the gauzy wings of golden honey-flies!

O! the music of their feet — of their dancing goblin feet!

O! the magic! O! the sorrow when it dies.

• Artist:J. R. R. Tolkien
• Album:Oxford Poetry, 1914—1916