Let's face it: there's only one reason most of us are going to visit Wolvercote Cemetery, and that…read moreis on pilgrimage to visit the grave of J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion. Of course, most great authors will profess that they were driven to inspiration by a muse of some sort, and here, laid to rest alongside him, you will also find the grave of she who inspired the tragic tale of Beren and Luthien; the one and only true love of his life: Edith Tolkien. I am nowhere near as clever or articulate an author as Tolkien, so there is little I could say that would do justice to the magic that befalls a pilgrim, such as myself, when visiting the final resting place of someone who had such a profound impact on my life. Thus, I will leave instead a passage written by the storied author, in remembrance of his wife, who tragically passed away before him, leaving him to grieve such an unfathomable loss, but who also turned that loss into an everlasting tribute to a love story that will echo through the ages. "Farewell sweet earth and northern sky, for ever blest, since here did lie and here with lissom limbs did run beneath the Moon, beneath the Sun, Lúthien Tinúviel more fair than Mortal tongue can tell. Though all to ruin fell the world and were dissolved and backward hurled; unmade into the old abyss, yet were its making good, for this― the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea― that Lúthien for a time should be." - JRR Tolkien, The Silmarillion