The Forest-walker

The Forest-walker is a poem written by J.R.R. Tolkien on August 25 and 26 of 1916.

Poem excerpt

Have you wandered in a woodland
When the lights begin to glow
From the tents and noisy lodges;
Did your halting footsteps go
Astray from beaten pathways
Through the bushes and young trees,
Till the lights were far behind you.

Background

Between August 25 and 26 of 1916, Tolkien wrote the first version of the poem alongside The Thatch of Poppies on some "squared notebook paper" in a dugout of Thiepval Wood. He entitled it The Forest Walker. In a second manuscript which was nearly identical to the first, Tolkien made a dedication "To Bus-lès-Artois Wood", a place that he visited on August 10 and 11 to think about the Tea Club, Barrovian Society and the ramifications of Robert Gilson's death.

Sometime between September 12 and 24 at Franqueville, Tolkien revised The Forest Walker, inscribed the same dedication as the second manuscript, and added the Old English words Se Wealdstapa ("Wood-stepper") to the title. Sometime later, Tolkien sent this version to Christopher Wiseman along with some other poems.

On January 18 of 1917, Christopher Wiseman returned the poems to Tolkien in a letter along with some comments on them in addition to suggesting that he write an epic.

Later, Tolkien revised The Forest Walker as The Forest-walker sometime around 1924, producing a typescript at Leeds with only minor changes.

In September 2024, the poem was published for the first time as entry 50 in The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien.