So, after complaining, what do I like about this passage? The hobbits have come through a long journey of increasing trauma and lately are skirting Hell, looking for a way in. They find unexpected beauty in Ithilien, part of a pattern through the whole story of havens after dangers. Here's the full paragraph:

  Day was opening in the sky, and they saw that the mountains were now
  much further off, receding eastward in a long curve that was lost in
  the distance. Before them, as they turned west, gentle slopes ran down
  into dim hazes far below. All about them were small woods of resinous
  trees, fir and cedar and cypress, and other kinds unknown in the
  Shire, with wide glades among them; and everywhere there was a wealth
  of sweet-smelling herbs and shrubs. The long journey from Rivendell
  had brought them far south of their own land, but not until now in
  this more sheltered region had the hobbits felt the change of
  clime. Here Spring was already busy about them: fronds pierced moss
  and mould, larches were green-fingered, small flowers were opening in
  the turf, birds were singing. Ithilien, the garden of Gondor now
  desolate kept still a dishevelled dryad loveliness.

It does get worked up about 'pretty countryside': that last sentence practically wants to go in a poem. (The GARden of GONdor now DESolate... still a dishevelled dryad loveliness.) The 'poetry' caps the paragraph where it fits in the rhythm of the telling. I didn't notice this artifice while reading the book, except insofar as it marked it into memory to bring the scene back from "dishevelled dryad loveliness".

I can't resist sharing another bit of found poetry, found by a program of mine at http://github.com/darius/versecop -- at the climax of all the action, Sam stands on Mount Doom and sees Sauron's works fall to ruin:

  ... A brief vision he had   Of swirling cloud, and in the midst of it   Towers and battlements, tall as hills,   Founded upon a mighty mountain-throne   Above immeasurable pits; great courts   And dungeons, eyeless prisons sheer as cliffs,   And gaping gates of steel and adamant:   And then all passed.

Line after line of near-perfect iambic pentameter. I don't know if Tolkien consciously hid a Miltonic line in his prose there -- I sort of doubt it -- but I am confident it was more than coincidence that put this longest iambic passage my program found at this moment of the story. Or that it's got more than its share of alliteration.

(Running the same program over the works of Jane Austen brought up only a few passages of two or three lines. Austen is great, just very different.)

Back to the first paragraph, "day was opening in the sky" -- "mountains receding eastward in a long curve" -- "Spring was already busy about them" -- "fronds pierced moss and mould" -- "Ithilien... kept still a dishelleved dryad loveliness". It's an awfully animate sort of landscape in these words, though not obtrusively so. I think that's another way the scene's brought to life.

There are nine and ninety ways to write, but I gotta say this is one of them.