was left standing on the Hill of Speech, and she stood there till she saw
the host in due array going on its ways dark and bright and beautiful;
then she made as if to turn aback to the Great Roof; but all at once it
seemed to her as if something held her back, as if her will to move had
departed from her, and that she could not put one foot before the other.
So she lingered on the Hill, and the quenched candle fell from her hand,
and presently she sank adown on the grass and sat there with the face of
one thinking intently. Yet was it with her that a thousand thoughts were
in her mind at once and no one of them uppermost, and images of what had
been and what then was flickered about in her brain, and betwixt them
were engendered images of things to be, but unstable and not to be trowed
in. So sat the Hall-Sun on the Hill of Speech lost in a dream of the
day, whose stories were as little clear as those of a night-dream.

But as she sat musing thus, came to her a woman exceeding old to look on,
whom she knew not as one of the kindred or a thrall; and this carline
greeted her by the name of Hall-Sun and said:

"Hail, Hall-Sun of the Markmen! how fares it now with thee
When the whelps of the Woodbeast wander with the Leafage of the Tree
All up the Mirkwood-water to seek what they shall find,
The oak-boles of the battle and the war-wood stark and blind?"

Then answered the maiden:

"It fares with me, O mother, that my soul would fain go forth
To behold the ways of the battle, and the praise of the warriors'
worth.
But yet is it held entangled in a maze of many a thing,
As the low-grown bramble holdeth the brake-shoots of the Spring.