The great shadow
descended like a falling cloud. An behold! it was a winged creature: if bird,
then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it
bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank.
A creature of an older world maybe it
was, whose kind, lingering in forgotten mountains cold beneath the Moon, outstayed their
day, and in hideous eyrie bred this last untimely brood, apt to evil
"The Return of the King" |