When the light dies and in creaps the dark whelm,
the door is revealed under the Moons guise.
Speak Friend and enter into the realm
of an empire domed by granite skies.

Behold, visitor! The majestic halls
that echo the clanging of hammers still
a whole age later after these walls
first bore marks of our patience and skill

woven together into an endless grid,
with caverns and roads stretching far and wide,
once richly adorned and brightly lit,
meriting to our mastery and pride.

Every day and night our smelters gorged
upon the hills of a precious ore.
The blunt pounding of our mighty Forge
through these passages that we bored

never ceased. The domain breathed with its draft,
that fed fires hotter than veins of Earth,
and in generations of labor in this craft
amassed riches of a boundless worth:

Silver, jewels, iron and mithril too,
all freed from the crampy grasp of stone -
as our picks slowly razed their way through
the Mountain towards the old and unknown.

There was no such thing as a well too deep
... untill there was. And in our greed and vain
we suddenly woke from it's lengthy sleep
the herald of our doom. The Durins bane.

Silent now stands the greatest of all
Dwarwen kingdoms. It's heirs deceased.
Defiled by vermin. Plundered. Appaled
from the enduring presence of the Beast.

But it's foretold that we will return
once that the Fiend is bested and slain.
The rekindled forge will again burn
and breathe life into the Mines again.

We press on forward, there is no going back,
with the menacing presence in our track
cut off we had just no other clear route...
In a desperate act we made our way
through the putrid stench, rot and decay
that embraced and hid us from the pursuit.

And though the Ring Wraiths roam the sky
the marsh did not betray us to scrying eyes
and our quest goes on though hanging by a thread.
We tread with caution among many plights
of this realm governed by entrancing lights -
as if revenants of the warriors long dead,

who haunt and taunt us with piercing stares
from every and all of the murky meres
like wet open graves scattered around.
The submission comes at a harrowing cost.
A moment of weakness and we'd be lost
to the enchanting spell of the drowned.

Their pale faces beyond the turbid shroud
either evil and grim, or fair and proud
all harbor a foul and twisted spark.
Long gone are the souls of both elves and men
Only these hungering husks now remain
On guard for a new prey in the dark.

Countless paths and yet just one leads out.
I'm being riddled with despair and doubt
as we're passing through the lasting haze;
in between the burden I barely abide.
and the uncertain whim of our guide,
will we ever emerge from this shifting maze?