métim’ auressë

in the last morning

The thirty-seventh line of the Markirya poem (MC/222). The first word is the adjective métima “last” with the final vowel elided because of the initial a in the next word, which is the locative form of the noun aurë “morning” (more commonly “day”).

Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:

> métim’ aure-ssë = “✱last morning-in”

Conceptual Development: In the first draft, Tolkien did not elide the adjective métima, and used a different word for “morning”: amaurëa (MC/222).