LOTR: Why Do The Elves Long For The Sea?

gamerant.com:

There are many themes in the Lord of the Rings that speak about what it means to return home, whether that is to a place, like Bag End and his armchair is for Bilbo, or whether that is to a calling, like finally taking up the throne of Gondor and fulfilling his purpose like it is for Aragorn, or even if that means returning to the people that you have loved and missed, like getting back to Rosie Cotton is for Sam. But for the elves of Middle Earth, there is a sort of bitter-sweet sadness in their calling home, in the longing that they always have to journey across the waters to the Undying Lands.

In a lament at the end of Return of the King, Legolas describes “Grey ships, Grey ships, do you hear them calling? The voices of my people that have gone before me.” There is a sense of longing in the elves, who know that their time is ending, and that they must journey forth to Valinor, where so many of their loved ones have already parted, like Arwen’s mother. But for so many elves, like the forest elves in Mirkwood, or the elves who live in Lothlorien, enveloped in trees and Galadriel's silver light, they may never have even seen the sea, or looked out upon the swift sunrise over a vast horizon, so what gives them this innate desire to return to the water?

What Is The Sea Of Ruin In The Hobbit?

The answer goes right back, before the First Age of Middle Earth, to the creation story that Tolkien first conceived as a child, long before he conceptualized the Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit. When Eru Illuvatar first created beings, they sprung from his mind into existence, and he gave each of them the gift of music. Within this music lay the power of all creation, and as these new beings (who later became known as the Valar) sang,