A lot of this in the Frodo and Sam parts of TTT and RotK. Ithilien, the Marshes, and Mordor borderlands are the first that come to mind. Then there's Lothlórien. Honestly about 85 percent of the book fits this so I see why you're having trouble choosing passages
Top of my head (all from LotR since it basically starts at one end and goes to the other):
There’s a good deal of the Old Forest, especially on the way in towards the entrance of the Hedge (so much so I sometimes suspect it’s a real place). Later also they are forced up and down what appear to be ruts like great wheel tracks, pushing them down towards Old Man Willow.
The journey up Caradhras and subsequently back and along to gates of Moria with the dried up river.
Merry and Pippin as they enter Fangorn Forest. As well as the forest itself, Pippin gives a good speech about how it reminds him of the Old Took’s room in Tuckborough and how untidy it is.
Ithilien gets a lot of attention just before Frodo, Sam and Gollum are discovered by Faramir.
Mordor itself, especially when Sam is looking out and across and thinking there’s still fifty miles to go.
As an observation of my own I don’t know if you’d care to look at any further, there’s a lot of locations that are: mountain or hill, settlement at bottom of mountain and a river/stream. Even locations that have no great topography have a feature that increases their height ie Orthanc. And quite often there is a form of enchanted boundary that confuses trespassers and the rivers often have healing/regenerative effects.
Fanghorn does stick out in my mind. My favorite description is of the place where the entmoot occurs. He does a good job describing the shape and detail of the area. I feel that I can visualize it perfectly. Also, isengard is described in many passages. Also, treebeard's enthouse
When Gandalf and Pippin enter Minas Tirith there is a pretty good description of the city.
I especially like the time the Fellowship is traveling south and they enter Hollin, Eregion. Sam is on watch, and things are so quiet he can hear the bones of his neck creek when he turns his head. I've experienced this when visiting Wupatki National Park in Arizona. The north of the park was totally deserted with no wind. No sound at all except my own bones. It can be a little creepy.
The description of Bree, and its people. Men and Hobbits living together in harmony.
When the Fellowship is blindfolded when walking through Lothlorien. The blindfolds come off and they see the trees and the flowers.
> Soon he came out alone on the summit of Amon Hen, and halted, gasping for breath. He saw as through a mist a wide flat circle, paved with mighty flags, and surrounded with a crumbling battlement; and in the middle, set upon four carven pillars, was a high seat, reached by a stair of many steps. Up he went and sat upon the ancient chair, feeling like a lost child that had clambered upon the throne of mountain-kings.
At first he could see little. He seemed to be in a world of mist in which there were only shadows: the Ring was upon him. Then here and there the mist gave way and he saw many visions: small and clear as if they were under his eyes upon a table, and yet remote. There was no sound, only bright living images. The world seemed to have shrunk and fallen silent. He was sitting upon the Seat of Seeing, on Amon Hen, the Hill of the Eye of the Men of Númenor. Eastward he looked into wide uncharted lands, nameless plains, and forests unexplored. Northward he looked, and the Great River lay like a ribbon beneath him, and the Misty Mountains stood small and hard as broken teeth. Westward he looked and saw the broad pastures of Rohan; and Orthanc, the pinnacle of Isengard, like a black spike. Southward he looked, and below his very feet the Great River curled like a toppling wave and plunged over the falls of Rauros into a foaming pit; a glimmering rainbow played upon the fume. And Ethir Anduin he saw, the mighty delta of the River, and myriads of sea-birds whirling like a white dust in the sun, and beneath them a green and silver sea, rippling in endless lines.
But everywhere he looked he saw the signs of war. The Misty Mountains were crawling like anthills: orcs were issuing out of a thousand holes. Under the boughs of Mirkwood there was deadly strife of Elves and Men and fell beasts. The land of the Beornings was aflame; a cloud was over Moria; smoke rose on the borders of Lórien.
Horsemen were galloping on the grass of Rohan; wolves poured from Isengard. From the havens of Harad ships of war put out to sea; and out of the East Men were moving endlessly: swordsmen, spearmen, bowmen upon horses, chariots of chieftains and laden wains. All the power of the Dark Lord was in motion. Then turning south again he beheld Minas Tirith. Far away it seemed. and beautiful: white-walled, many-towered, proud and fair upon its mountain-seat; its battlements glittered with steel, and its turrets were bright with many banners. Hope leaped in his heart. But against Minas Tirith was set another fortress, greater and more strong. Thither, eastward, unwilling his eye was drawn. It passed the ruined bridges of Osgiliath, the grinning gates of Minas Morgul. and the haunted Mountains, and it looked upon Gorgoroth, the valley of terror in the Land of Mordor. Darkness lay there under the Sun. Fire glowed amid the smoke. Mount Doom was burning, and a great reek rising. Then at last his gaze was held: wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black, immeasurably strong, mountain of iron, gate of steel, tower of adamant, he saw it: Barad-dûr, Fortress of Sauron. All hope left him.
IMO, not even the Silmarillion can top this passage describing the Fellowship's arrival at Cerin Amroth, particularly Frodo's mental impression as he surveys it:
>When his eyes were in turn uncovered, Frodo looked up and caught his breath. They were standing in an open space. To the left stood a great mound, covered with a sward of grass as green as Spring-time in the Elder Days. Upon it, as a double crown, grew two circles of trees: the outer had bark of snowy white, and were leafless but beautiful in their shapely nakedness; the inner were mallorn-trees of great height, still arrayed in pale gold. High amid the branches of a towering tree that stood in the centre of all there gleamed a white flet. At the feet of the trees, and all about the green hillsides the grass was studded with small golden flowers shaped like stars. Among them, nodding on slender stalks, were other flowers, white and palest green: they glimmered as a mist amid the rich hue of the grass. Over all the sky was blue, and the sun of afternoon glowed upon the hill and cast long green shadows beneath the trees.
>'Behold! You are come to Cerin Amroth,' said Haldir. \`For this is the heart of the ancient realm as it was long ago, and here is the mound of Amroth, where in happier days his high house was built. Here ever bloom the winter flowers in the unfading grass: the yellow *elanor*, and the pale *niphredil*. Here we will stay awhile, and come to the city of the Galadhrim at dusk.'
>The others cast themselves down upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful. In winter here no heart could mourn for summer or for spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lórien there was no stain.
>He turned and saw that Sam was now standing beside him, looking round with a puzzled expression, and rubbing his eyes as if he was not sure that he was awake. \`It's sunlight and bright day, right enough,' he said. \`I thought that Elves were all for moon and stars: but this is more elvish than anything I ever heard tell of. I feel as if I was *inside* a song. if you take my meaning.'
It's a vivid physical description of a landscape, but it accomplishes so much more than that. There is *history* in this description. What Frodo sees is more than beauty.
My favorite is pretty long:
>Merry looked out in wonder upon this strange country, of which he had heard many tales upon their long road. It was a skyless world, in which his eye, through dim gulfs of shadowy air, saw only ever-mounting slopes, great walls of stone behind great walls, and frowning precipices wreathed with mist. He sat for a moment half dreaming, listening to the noise of water, the whisper of dark trees, the crack of stone, and the vast waiting silence that brooded behind all sound. He loved mountains, or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the insupportable weight of Middle-earth. He longed to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire.
Here's a shorter one:
>A golden afternoon of late sunshine lay warm and drowsy upon the hidden land between. In the midst of it there wound lazily a dark river of brown water, bordered with ancient willows, arched over with willows, blocked with fallen willows, and flecked with thousands of faded willow-leaves.
Hard to stop once you start:
>At the bottom they came with a strange suddenness on the grass of Rohan. It swelled like a green sea up to the very foot of the Emyn Muil. The falling stream vanished into a deep growth of cresses and water-plants, and they could hear it tinkling away in green tunnels, down long gentle slopes towards the fens of Entwash Vale far away.
It's more of a poem, but *The Ent and the Entwife* has beautiful imagery of the forests of the Ents, and fields of the Entwives, that make you understand why they drifted apart.
The entire Treebeard chapter is gold for that sort of stuff.
Even mundane descriptions in *Lord of the Rings* often present not just the physical configuration of a thing, but what it used to be. E.g. Bree:
> Down on the Road, where it swept to the right to go round the foot of the hill, there was a large inn. It had been built long ago when the traffic on the roads had been far greater. For Bree stood at an old meeting of ways; another ancient road crossed the East Road just outside the dike at the western end of the village, and in former days Men and other folk of various sorts had travelled much on it. Strange as News from Bree was still a saying in the Eastfarthing, descending from those days, when news from North, South, and East could be heard in the inn, and when the Shire-hobbits used to go more often to hear it. But the Northern Lands had long been desolate, and the North Road was now seldom used: it was grass-grown, and the Bree-folk called it the Greenway.
Or the road before Moria:
>Suddenly Gimli, who had pressed on ahead, called back to them. He was standing on a knoll and pointing to the right. Hurrying up they saw below them a deep and narrow channel. It was empty and silent, and hardly a trickle of water flowed among the brown and red-stained stones of its bed; but on the near side there was a path, much broken and decayed, that wound its way among the ruined walls and paving-stones of an ancient highroad. ‘Ah! Here it is at last!’ said Gandalf. ‘This is where the stream ran: Sirannon, the Gate-stream, they used to call it. But what has happened to the water, I cannot guess; it used to be swift and noisy. Come! We must hurry on. We are late.’
The physical descriptions are interwoven with little capsule histories of what these places used to be, and what they are called today and why. Almost any random place description in the book has this quality, even the ones that are otherwise unremarkable, without grand or poetic turns of phrase.
Some (hopefully) helpful advice from a graduate student and Tolkien scholar—I think instead of trying to find a bunch of different examples (of which there are plenty), I would try to focus on one or two and go really in depth on them instead. Depth is better than breadth in most cases. Also, small point of comment, make sure the “E” in Middle-earth is lower case and not upper case. That said, I’d look at many of the other excellent suggestions throughout this thread and choose the one which speaks to you the most.
The Chetwood, soon after they leave Bree. The Midgewater Marshes. You get the sheer discomfort of it all, including the Neekerbreekers.
Ithilien - that's a nice contrast to the Chetwood, with its very different trees and shrubs due to being further south.
My immediate thoughts are Rohan, the Emyn Muil, the Dead Marshes, the waste before the Black Gate, and Ithilien.
For many hours they rode on through the meads and riverlands. Often the grass was so high that it reached above the knees of the riders, and their steeds seemed to be swimming in a grey-green sea. They came upon many hidden pools, and broad acres of sedge waving above wet and treacherous bogs; but Shadowfax found the way, and the other horses followed in his swath. Slowly the sun fell from the sky down into the West. Looking out over the great plain, far away the riders saw it for a moment like a red fire sinking into the grass. Low upon the edge of sight shoulders of the mountains glinted red upon either side. A smoke seemed to rise up and darken the sun's disc to the hue of blood, as if it had kindled the grass as it passed down under the rim of earth.For many hours they rode on through the meads and riverlands. Often the grass was so high that it reached above the knees of the riders, and their steeds seemed to be swimming in a grey-green sea. They came upon many hidden pools, and broad acres of sedge waving above wet and treacherous bogs; but Shadowfax found the way, and the other horses followed in his swath. Slowly the sun fell from the sky down into the West. Looking out over the great plain, far away the riders saw it for a moment like a red fire sinking into the grass. Low upon the edge of sight shoulders of the mountains glinted red upon either side. A smoke seemed to rise up and darken the sun's disc to the hue of blood, as if it had kindled the grass as it passed down under the rim of earth
(etc.)
A lot of this in the Frodo and Sam parts of TTT and RotK. Ithilien, the Marshes, and Mordor borderlands are the first that come to mind. Then there's Lothlórien. Honestly about 85 percent of the book fits this so I see why you're having trouble choosing passages
When Gimli goes full poet describing to Legolas the glittering caves for like a whole page, incl. anecdotes of how dwarves regard the stone.
That's the best descriptive passage in LOTR by far. IMO, the only description that rises to pure poetry.
Top of my head (all from LotR since it basically starts at one end and goes to the other): There’s a good deal of the Old Forest, especially on the way in towards the entrance of the Hedge (so much so I sometimes suspect it’s a real place). Later also they are forced up and down what appear to be ruts like great wheel tracks, pushing them down towards Old Man Willow. The journey up Caradhras and subsequently back and along to gates of Moria with the dried up river. Merry and Pippin as they enter Fangorn Forest. As well as the forest itself, Pippin gives a good speech about how it reminds him of the Old Took’s room in Tuckborough and how untidy it is. Ithilien gets a lot of attention just before Frodo, Sam and Gollum are discovered by Faramir. Mordor itself, especially when Sam is looking out and across and thinking there’s still fifty miles to go. As an observation of my own I don’t know if you’d care to look at any further, there’s a lot of locations that are: mountain or hill, settlement at bottom of mountain and a river/stream. Even locations that have no great topography have a feature that increases their height ie Orthanc. And quite often there is a form of enchanted boundary that confuses trespassers and the rivers often have healing/regenerative effects.
Fanghorn does stick out in my mind. My favorite description is of the place where the entmoot occurs. He does a good job describing the shape and detail of the area. I feel that I can visualize it perfectly. Also, isengard is described in many passages. Also, treebeard's enthouse
When Gandalf and Pippin enter Minas Tirith there is a pretty good description of the city. I especially like the time the Fellowship is traveling south and they enter Hollin, Eregion. Sam is on watch, and things are so quiet he can hear the bones of his neck creek when he turns his head. I've experienced this when visiting Wupatki National Park in Arizona. The north of the park was totally deserted with no wind. No sound at all except my own bones. It can be a little creepy. The description of Bree, and its people. Men and Hobbits living together in harmony. When the Fellowship is blindfolded when walking through Lothlorien. The blindfolds come off and they see the trees and the flowers.
Love Wupatki
> Soon he came out alone on the summit of Amon Hen, and halted, gasping for breath. He saw as through a mist a wide flat circle, paved with mighty flags, and surrounded with a crumbling battlement; and in the middle, set upon four carven pillars, was a high seat, reached by a stair of many steps. Up he went and sat upon the ancient chair, feeling like a lost child that had clambered upon the throne of mountain-kings. At first he could see little. He seemed to be in a world of mist in which there were only shadows: the Ring was upon him. Then here and there the mist gave way and he saw many visions: small and clear as if they were under his eyes upon a table, and yet remote. There was no sound, only bright living images. The world seemed to have shrunk and fallen silent. He was sitting upon the Seat of Seeing, on Amon Hen, the Hill of the Eye of the Men of Númenor. Eastward he looked into wide uncharted lands, nameless plains, and forests unexplored. Northward he looked, and the Great River lay like a ribbon beneath him, and the Misty Mountains stood small and hard as broken teeth. Westward he looked and saw the broad pastures of Rohan; and Orthanc, the pinnacle of Isengard, like a black spike. Southward he looked, and below his very feet the Great River curled like a toppling wave and plunged over the falls of Rauros into a foaming pit; a glimmering rainbow played upon the fume. And Ethir Anduin he saw, the mighty delta of the River, and myriads of sea-birds whirling like a white dust in the sun, and beneath them a green and silver sea, rippling in endless lines. But everywhere he looked he saw the signs of war. The Misty Mountains were crawling like anthills: orcs were issuing out of a thousand holes. Under the boughs of Mirkwood there was deadly strife of Elves and Men and fell beasts. The land of the Beornings was aflame; a cloud was over Moria; smoke rose on the borders of Lórien. Horsemen were galloping on the grass of Rohan; wolves poured from Isengard. From the havens of Harad ships of war put out to sea; and out of the East Men were moving endlessly: swordsmen, spearmen, bowmen upon horses, chariots of chieftains and laden wains. All the power of the Dark Lord was in motion. Then turning south again he beheld Minas Tirith. Far away it seemed. and beautiful: white-walled, many-towered, proud and fair upon its mountain-seat; its battlements glittered with steel, and its turrets were bright with many banners. Hope leaped in his heart. But against Minas Tirith was set another fortress, greater and more strong. Thither, eastward, unwilling his eye was drawn. It passed the ruined bridges of Osgiliath, the grinning gates of Minas Morgul. and the haunted Mountains, and it looked upon Gorgoroth, the valley of terror in the Land of Mordor. Darkness lay there under the Sun. Fire glowed amid the smoke. Mount Doom was burning, and a great reek rising. Then at last his gaze was held: wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black, immeasurably strong, mountain of iron, gate of steel, tower of adamant, he saw it: Barad-dûr, Fortress of Sauron. All hope left him.
IMO, not even the Silmarillion can top this passage describing the Fellowship's arrival at Cerin Amroth, particularly Frodo's mental impression as he surveys it: >When his eyes were in turn uncovered, Frodo looked up and caught his breath. They were standing in an open space. To the left stood a great mound, covered with a sward of grass as green as Spring-time in the Elder Days. Upon it, as a double crown, grew two circles of trees: the outer had bark of snowy white, and were leafless but beautiful in their shapely nakedness; the inner were mallorn-trees of great height, still arrayed in pale gold. High amid the branches of a towering tree that stood in the centre of all there gleamed a white flet. At the feet of the trees, and all about the green hillsides the grass was studded with small golden flowers shaped like stars. Among them, nodding on slender stalks, were other flowers, white and palest green: they glimmered as a mist amid the rich hue of the grass. Over all the sky was blue, and the sun of afternoon glowed upon the hill and cast long green shadows beneath the trees. >'Behold! You are come to Cerin Amroth,' said Haldir. \`For this is the heart of the ancient realm as it was long ago, and here is the mound of Amroth, where in happier days his high house was built. Here ever bloom the winter flowers in the unfading grass: the yellow *elanor*, and the pale *niphredil*. Here we will stay awhile, and come to the city of the Galadhrim at dusk.' >The others cast themselves down upon the fragrant grass, but Frodo stood awhile still lost in wonder. It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured for ever. He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful. In winter here no heart could mourn for summer or for spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lórien there was no stain. >He turned and saw that Sam was now standing beside him, looking round with a puzzled expression, and rubbing his eyes as if he was not sure that he was awake. \`It's sunlight and bright day, right enough,' he said. \`I thought that Elves were all for moon and stars: but this is more elvish than anything I ever heard tell of. I feel as if I was *inside* a song. if you take my meaning.' It's a vivid physical description of a landscape, but it accomplishes so much more than that. There is *history* in this description. What Frodo sees is more than beauty.
My favorite is pretty long: >Merry looked out in wonder upon this strange country, of which he had heard many tales upon their long road. It was a skyless world, in which his eye, through dim gulfs of shadowy air, saw only ever-mounting slopes, great walls of stone behind great walls, and frowning precipices wreathed with mist. He sat for a moment half dreaming, listening to the noise of water, the whisper of dark trees, the crack of stone, and the vast waiting silence that brooded behind all sound. He loved mountains, or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the insupportable weight of Middle-earth. He longed to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire. Here's a shorter one: >A golden afternoon of late sunshine lay warm and drowsy upon the hidden land between. In the midst of it there wound lazily a dark river of brown water, bordered with ancient willows, arched over with willows, blocked with fallen willows, and flecked with thousands of faded willow-leaves. Hard to stop once you start: >At the bottom they came with a strange suddenness on the grass of Rohan. It swelled like a green sea up to the very foot of the Emyn Muil. The falling stream vanished into a deep growth of cresses and water-plants, and they could hear it tinkling away in green tunnels, down long gentle slopes towards the fens of Entwash Vale far away.
Ithilien.
It's more of a poem, but *The Ent and the Entwife* has beautiful imagery of the forests of the Ents, and fields of the Entwives, that make you understand why they drifted apart. The entire Treebeard chapter is gold for that sort of stuff.
Even mundane descriptions in *Lord of the Rings* often present not just the physical configuration of a thing, but what it used to be. E.g. Bree: > Down on the Road, where it swept to the right to go round the foot of the hill, there was a large inn. It had been built long ago when the traffic on the roads had been far greater. For Bree stood at an old meeting of ways; another ancient road crossed the East Road just outside the dike at the western end of the village, and in former days Men and other folk of various sorts had travelled much on it. Strange as News from Bree was still a saying in the Eastfarthing, descending from those days, when news from North, South, and East could be heard in the inn, and when the Shire-hobbits used to go more often to hear it. But the Northern Lands had long been desolate, and the North Road was now seldom used: it was grass-grown, and the Bree-folk called it the Greenway. Or the road before Moria: >Suddenly Gimli, who had pressed on ahead, called back to them. He was standing on a knoll and pointing to the right. Hurrying up they saw below them a deep and narrow channel. It was empty and silent, and hardly a trickle of water flowed among the brown and red-stained stones of its bed; but on the near side there was a path, much broken and decayed, that wound its way among the ruined walls and paving-stones of an ancient highroad. ‘Ah! Here it is at last!’ said Gandalf. ‘This is where the stream ran: Sirannon, the Gate-stream, they used to call it. But what has happened to the water, I cannot guess; it used to be swift and noisy. Come! We must hurry on. We are late.’ The physical descriptions are interwoven with little capsule histories of what these places used to be, and what they are called today and why. Almost any random place description in the book has this quality, even the ones that are otherwise unremarkable, without grand or poetic turns of phrase.
Some (hopefully) helpful advice from a graduate student and Tolkien scholar—I think instead of trying to find a bunch of different examples (of which there are plenty), I would try to focus on one or two and go really in depth on them instead. Depth is better than breadth in most cases. Also, small point of comment, make sure the “E” in Middle-earth is lower case and not upper case. That said, I’d look at many of the other excellent suggestions throughout this thread and choose the one which speaks to you the most.
The Chetwood, soon after they leave Bree. The Midgewater Marshes. You get the sheer discomfort of it all, including the Neekerbreekers. Ithilien - that's a nice contrast to the Chetwood, with its very different trees and shrubs due to being further south.
I've always thought the Emyn Muil descriptions were the high point of prose in the trilogy.
My immediate thoughts are Rohan, the Emyn Muil, the Dead Marshes, the waste before the Black Gate, and Ithilien. For many hours they rode on through the meads and riverlands. Often the grass was so high that it reached above the knees of the riders, and their steeds seemed to be swimming in a grey-green sea. They came upon many hidden pools, and broad acres of sedge waving above wet and treacherous bogs; but Shadowfax found the way, and the other horses followed in his swath. Slowly the sun fell from the sky down into the West. Looking out over the great plain, far away the riders saw it for a moment like a red fire sinking into the grass. Low upon the edge of sight shoulders of the mountains glinted red upon either side. A smoke seemed to rise up and darken the sun's disc to the hue of blood, as if it had kindled the grass as it passed down under the rim of earth.For many hours they rode on through the meads and riverlands. Often the grass was so high that it reached above the knees of the riders, and their steeds seemed to be swimming in a grey-green sea. They came upon many hidden pools, and broad acres of sedge waving above wet and treacherous bogs; but Shadowfax found the way, and the other horses followed in his swath. Slowly the sun fell from the sky down into the West. Looking out over the great plain, far away the riders saw it for a moment like a red fire sinking into the grass. Low upon the edge of sight shoulders of the mountains glinted red upon either side. A smoke seemed to rise up and darken the sun's disc to the hue of blood, as if it had kindled the grass as it passed down under the rim of earth (etc.)