The felling of the White Tree

We often talk about White Trees around here --- the Tree of Life from the Book of Mormon and the various White Trees in the works of Tolkien. These were most recently juxtaposed in "Apple of ashes, brine to the burning throat" (July 19), a post which was -- appropriately, as we shall see -- occasioned by a passage in Orson F. Whitney's 1904 poem Elias: An Epic of the Ages. That post emphasized the fact that Nimloth, one of Tolkien's White Trees, was in Bill's words "the tree that Pharazon burned down."

Strictly speaking, Nimloth was not "burned down," but rather felled and then burned. As The Silmarillion tells it, "the King yielded to Sauron and felled the White Tree," after which "the first fire upon the altar Sauron kindled with the hewn wood of Nimloth."

The White Tree from Nephi's vision in the Book of Mormon is never felled or burned -- but in Whitney's poem it is. Referring to Nephi's High Mountain Vision, the poet writes:

    All this and more the prophet-prince foresaw;

    Messiah's self -- Jehovah -- Him beheld, --

    The Perfect One, in whom was found no flaw,

    Though slander as an ocean round Him swelled.

    Life's deathless tree -- deathless, though demon-felled;

    The crash resounding to this far-off shore,

    Whose winnowed remnant welcomed Him, revealed

    In risen glory, when had ceased the roar

Of wrecking tempests, flung His radiant face before.

(Retelling the High Mountain Vision in Spenserian stanzas is something I would do. I'm kind of bummed that Whitney beat me to it.)

The language I have bolded is all figurative, of course. The white Tree of Life is made to represent Jesus himself, "demon-felled" because executed at the instigation of the Jews, who had raised a swelling "ocean" of calumny against him, and yet still "deathless" because of the Resurrection. The crash of the falling tree "resounding" in the distant West is a reference to the great destruction unleashed on the Book of Mormon lands shortly after the death of Christ.

It's a somewhat strange choice of imagery, especially since the execution of Jesus involved raising a "tree" (as the Cross is often poetically called) rather than felling one. It's also a misreading of Nephi, for whom the White Tree pretty clearly represents the Virgin rather than her Son (see "You, Lady, are the Tree"). By "coincidence," though, Whitney's poetic language -- published when Tolkien was still a schoolboy -- presages the latter's own White Tree story. Tolkien's White Tree is felled at the command of a demon (Sauron, the equivalent of a fallen angel), and yet lives on as the successive White Trees of Gondor, grown from its fruit. The felling of the Tree represents Pharazon's choice to serve Sauron, which has repercussions for the distant West (Tol Eressea and Aman), and which results in the downfall of Numenor, "an ocean round [it] swelled."