Laica ar Mara

First, the repeating line “Tultá nin”. This should be fully correct. ‘Tult-’ is a verb meaning ‘to fetch/bring’, adding that long ‘á’ at the end make it an imperative statement; specifically, I chose the rudest and most demanding way to state the imperative. More polite ways would be ‘á tulte’ or just ‘tulte’, but the speaker here is bellowing “BRING ME MY ____ RIGHT FUCKING NOW” with each line. (Imagine Fingon screaming to a squire as he does battle with Glaurung.) ‘Nin’ means ‘to me’; ‘ni’ is the pronoun ‘me’ and the ‘-n’ makes it dative. So, “Tultá nin”, ‘Bring to me (right fucking now)’.

‘Ustalaure’ is that so-enticing ‘of burning gold’, which I knew would be one word in Quenya. There were SO many exciting options for this one. Five words for flame or fire or burning, at least three for gold. It was ‘uryamalto’ in one draft, and ‘ancalaure’ in another, which I liked best before I decided that I reaallllyyyy  didn’t trust the one unattested gloss of ‘ancal’ as ‘blazing’. I was briefly ‘quilealaure’ (golden-colored) just to alliterate with the noun. Out of the several words I could have used for ‘gold’ I picked ‘laure’ (famously the second half of Macalaure) because it specifically means gold (the color) not gold (the metal) (which is malta). For ‘burning’ I had a lot of options, but to emphasize that they were ‘burning’ as in ‘so brightly golden they sear the eyes’, I went in the end ‘usta-’, a primitive word-root meaning ‘burn/destroy’. ‘usta-’ and related ‘urya-’ often have a baleful/harmful connotation, but that goes with the warlike tone here. The speaker is pissed.

I wouldn't blame anyone who rejected 'usta' or how I used it, I was digging into word roots for sure.

‘Quinganya’ is much, much more simple. ‘quinga’ is ‘bow’ (the weapon’, adding ‘-nya’ to the end of a noun makes it ‘my (noun)’. Quinganya, my bow.

I put all the nouns at the end of their lines (excepting the third) because it created an easy rhyme structure, and grammatically, having the adjective go before the noun usually makes sense in Quenya. Thus, the whole first line is FETCH ME MY BURNING-GOLD BOW (NOW). The rest will be essentially the same in grammatical structure and tone.

Second line: ‘estelo’ is simply ‘of hope.’ You know ‘estel’. In Blake’s poem the arrows are ‘of desire’, so you could use ‘iro/iraran/something like that’, but that didn’t quite have the right word-sense. The speaker of Blake’s poem is intent on tearing down the way the world is to builder a better world in its ashes. That staggering militant optimism deserves ‘estel.’

I am TRUSTING Paul Strack when he says the plural 'my arrows' is 'pilindinya' and not 'pilindinyar'. I really want that to be the case as that plural 'r' would mess up my rhyme scheme. I considered making these two words the singular 'estelo pilinya' for a less mouthy meter, but, come on, just ONE arrow of hope? No. Several arrows of hope and damn the extra syllables.

Similarly, going into the third line, ‘ehtanya’ is ‘my spear.’ The spear is the only one of the objects not described, so this leads me right into the line I had the most trouble with.

‘Oh Clouds Unfold!’ To my own surprise, after much work, I went with a very literal translation of this poetic phrase. It alliterated better than I thought it would. ‘a lumbor úlapá!’. ‘Oh’ “A”, ‘lumbor’ (‘dark clouds’; the more-common word ‘fanyar’ means clouds but the less-common ‘lumbor’ makes a more striking ‘after the storm’ image), and then ‘úlapá’—‘lap’ to fold, the last ‘á’ to make it an imperative command again, and then the ‘ú’, which is one of several possible contested ways to negate a verb in Quenya (it’s a whole thing.) ‘Ye dark storm-clouds, unfold, NOW!’ I didn't like it before I replaced 'fanyar' with 'lumbor' but now it has a good ring.

And I can almost keep it in the rhyme scheme (though á and a are not the same imo) because an imperitive doesn't have to be pluralized (if you don't want it to be).

(For extra fun, for a while, I had this line as the less-literal but very striking ‘A Anar tercalá!’ instead, the incredibly ballsy demand of ‘Oh Sun, shine through!’ ‘tercala’ was my invention, but cala- is a verb meaning shine (like the sun), and ter- when added to a verb adds ‘through’ to the meaning, which is attested in several real Quenya verbs.)

Final line: CHARIOT OF FIRE! I specifically didn’t use ‘ruine’ (red fire) in the first line because I wanted to use it here (and because it implies a red color). Ruine is a noun again, so I added a genitive -eo on the end again with the hopes that that makes grammatical sense.

There is no Quenya word for ‘chariot’. I could have used a word for ‘cart’, but that creates an entirely incorrect picture. The speaker is demanding their tools of war. The tool of war that elves who spoke Quenya use for transportation was the horse. So, to alliterate with ruineo, I use the most common term for horse, ‘rocco’; ‘ruineo rocconya’, my horse of fire. Not perfect, but since there’s a missing word here, it was always going to be a little off.

I don’t know if I can or will do the rest of the poem—terms like ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘England’ and ‘Satanic mills’ present issues that make me feel dizzy. But just as a bonus, my translation of ‘I will not cease from Mental Fight / Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand’ is ‘úhautuvan i mahtaleva sámo / úloruva macilnya cambenyasse,’ though that REALLY needs a second grammatical pass, ha ha.