Gil-Galad Poem by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Even if you don't know Middle Earth it is a still a very good poem and stands by itself. I agree with John Callahan.

It is still a poem despite being in a book of fiction. It can be read as a poem, though the reader needs to know some background from the Lord of the Rings trilogy to get the meaning. It and others from the books are still excellent pieces of poetry.

Not really. People need to put Tolkien's poems into context. They are all part of stories in his books. They are not stand-alone poems like Walt Whitman's or Edgar Poe's. They play an intricate part in great stories and books, but it just looks stupid if one tries to analyze it as a stand alone poem, because it ends up getting compared with other poems, which doesn't make sense considering the context of the verses. Gil-Galad was an elven King. Gil-Galad the fair, elven king of lore, whose story is told in the histories of Middle Earth, while this poem was uttered by Aragorn during the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Another work of this legend master, who revived this genre in a time where it needed (and still does!) the most, time when 'what is ancient and powerfull' began to fade and be forgoten... On a first glance, it's a simple, baladic poem with a folk sound, but here lies its depth. It combines the epic sound and the lyrical power, a combination typical for the north, for the balads and the poems of the old Germans, Celts etc (I'd mention here 'Grottasongr' from the Poetic Edda as an example) , all that united within the Tolkien's, as I'd put it: celestial melancholy