The only suggestion, so far as I can see, that this view might not be correct is found in an early poem with a complex history, texts of which I give here.

The earliest rough drafts of this poem are extant; the original title was ‘The Wanderer’s Allegiance’, and it is not clear that it was at first conceived as a poem in three parts. My father subsequently wrote in subtitles on these drafts, dividing the poem into three: Prelude, The Inland City, and The Sorrowful City, with (apparently) an overall title The Sorrowful City; and added a date, March 16–18, 1916. In the only later copy of the whole poem that is extant the overall title is The Town of Dreams and the City of Present Sorrow, with the three parts titled: Prelude (Old English Foresang), The Town of Dreams (Old English pжt Sl pende Tъn), and The city of Present Sorrow (Old English Seo Wйpende Burg). This text gives the dates ‘March 1916, Oxford and Warwick; rewritten Birmingham November 1916’. ‘The Town of Dreams’ is Warwick, on the River Avon, and ‘The City of Present Sorrow’ is Oxford, on the Thames, during the First War; there is no evident association of any kind with Eriol or the Lost Tales.

Prelude

In unknown days my fathers’ sires

Came, and from son to son took root

Among the orchards and the river-meads

And the long grasses of the fragrant plain:

Many a summer saw they kindle yellow fires

Of iris in the bowing reeds,

And many a sea of blossom turn to golden fruit

In wallйd gardens of the great champain.

There daffodils among the ordered trees

Did nod in spring, and men laughed deep and long

Singing as they laboured happy lays

And lighting even with a drinking-song.

There sleep came easy for the drone of bees

Thronging about cottage gardens heaped with flowers;

In love of sunlit goodliness of days

There richly flowed their lives in settled hours—

But that was long ago,

And now no more they sing, nor reap, nor sow,

And I perforce in many a town about this isle

Unsettled wanderer have dwelt awhile.

The Town of Dreams

Here many days once gently past me crept

In this dear town of old forgetfulness;

Here all entwined in dreams once long I slept

And heard no echo of the world’s distress

Come through the rustle of the elms’ rich leaves,

While Avon gurgling over shallows wove

Unending melody, and morns and eves

Slipped down her waters till the Autumn came,

(Like the gold leaves that drip and flutter then,

Till the dark river gleams with jets of flame

That slowly float far down beyond our ken.)

For here the castle and the mighty tower,

More lofty than the tiered elms,

More grey than long November rain,

Sleep, and nor sunlit moment nor triumphal hour,

Nor passing of the seasons or the Sun

Wakes their old lords too long in slumber lain.

No watchfulness disturbs their splendid dream,

Though laughing radiance dance down the stream;

And be they clad in snow or lashed by windy rains,

Or may March whirl the dust about the winding lanes,

The Elm robe and disrobe her of a million leaves

Like moments clustered in a crowded year,

Still their old heart unmoved nor weeps nor grieves,

Uncomprehending of this evil tide,

Today’s great sadness, or Tomorrow’s fear:

Faint echoes fade within their drowsy halls

Like ghosts; the daylight creeps across their walls.

The City of Present Sorrow

There is a city that far distant lies

And a vale outcarven in forgotten days—

There wider was the grass, and lofty elms more rare;

The river-sense was heavy in the lowland air.

There many willows changed the aspect of the earth and skies

Where feeding brooks wound in by sluggish ways,

And down the margin of the sailing Thames

Around his broad old bosom their old stems

Were bowed, and subtle shades lay on his streams

Where their grey leaves adroop o’er silver pools

Did knit a coverlet like shimmering jewels

Of blue and misty green and filtering gleams.

O agйd city of an all too brief sojourn,

I see thy clustered windows each one burn

With lamps and candles of departed men.

The misty stars thy crown, the night thy dress,

Most peerless-magical thou dost possess

My heart, and old days come to life again;

Old mornings dawn, or darkened evenings bring

The same old twilight noises from the town.

Thou hast the very core of longing and delight,

To thee my spirit dances oft in sleep

Along thy great grey streets, or down

A little lamplit alley-way at night—

Thinking no more of other cities it has known,

Forgetting for a while the tree-girt keep,

And town of dreams, where men no longer sing.

For thy heart knows, and thou shedst many tears

For all the sorrow of these evil years.

Thy thousand pinnacles and fretted spires

Are lit with echoes and the lambent fires

Of many companies of bells that ring

Rousing pale visions of majestic days

The windy years have strewn down distant ways;

And in thy halls still doth thy spirit sing

Songs of old memory amid thy present tears,

Or hope of days to come half-sad with many fears.

Lo! though along thy paths no laughter runs

While war untimely takes thy many sons,

No tide of evil can thy glory drown

Robed in sad majesty, the stars thy crown.

In addition, there are two texts in which a part of The City of Present Sorrow is treated as a separate entity. This begins with ‘O agйd city of an all too brief sojourn’, and is briefer: after the line ‘Thinking no more of other cities it has known’ it ends:

Forgetting for a while that all men weep

It strays there happy and to thee it sings

‘No tide of evil can thy glory drown,

Robed in sad majesty, the stars thy crown!’

This was first called The Sorrowful City, but the title was then changed to Wнnsele wйste, windge reste rйte berofene (Beowulf lines 2456–7, very slightly adapted: ‘the hall of feasting empty, the resting places swept by the wind, robbed of laughter’).

There are also two manuscripts in which The Town of Dreams is treated as a separate poem, with a subtitle An old town revisited; in one of these the primary title was later changed to The Town of Dead Days.

Lastly, there is a poem in two parts called The Song of Eriol. This is found in three manuscripts, the later ones incorporating minor changes made to the predecessor (but the third has only the second part of the poem).

The Song of Eriol

Eriol made a song in the Room of the Tale-fire telling how his feet were set to wandering, so that in the end he found the Lonely Isle and that fairest town Kortirion.

I

In unknown days my fathers’ sires

Came, and from son to son took root

Among the orchards and the river-meads

And the long grasses of the fragrant plain:

Many a summer saw they kindle yellow fires

Of flaglilies among the bowing reeds,

And many a sea of blossom turn to golden fruit

In wallйd gardens of the great champain.

There daffodils among the ordered trees

Did nod in spring, and men laughed deep and long

Singing as they laboured happy lays