"Well, Master Samwise, how do you feel?"
But
Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment,
between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer.
At last he gasped: "Gandalf! I thought you were dead!
But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad
going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?"
"A
great shadow has departed," said Gandalf, and then
he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water
in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to
Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment,
for days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo
of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst
into tears. Then as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of
spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears
ceased, and his laughter welled up, and laughing he sprang
from bed... "How do I feel?" he cried." Well,
I don't know how to say it. I feel, I feel" --he waved
his arms in the air-- "I feel like spring after winter,
and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all
the songs I have ever heard!"
--
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), The Return of the King
