No Shadow Fall Across this Land

Lothlorien

Favorite illustrators and illustrations (C) Greg and Tim Hildebrandt

Frodo looked up and caught his breath. They were standing in an open space. To the left stood a great mound, covered with a sward of grass as green as Spring-time in the Elder Days. Upon it, as a double crown, grew two circles of trees: the outer had bark of snowy white, and were leafless but beautiful in their shapely nakedness; the inner were mallorn-trees of great height, still arrayed in pale gold. The others cast themselves down upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lórien there was no stain.