The Long Defeat

This is almost excruciating in its poignancy. What we have lost...

Galadriel says “Through the ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.” 

And Tolkien, himself: “I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’ — though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.”