Sam and Frodo climb Cerin Amroth with Haldir. As they do so they feel the south wind and hear the sound of the seas of long ago and birds whose races have perished from the earth. Climbing onto the flet at the centre of the circle of trees, Frodo sees a hill of mighty trees and when he lifts his eyes the river a land flat and formless rising to a dark wall. Haldir tells them that the dark wall is southern Mirkwood, where lies Dol Guldur, the stronghold where Sauron long dwelt while regaining his power.
”In this high place you may see the two powers that are opposed to one to another; and ever they strive now in though, but whereas the light perceives the very heart of the darkness, its own secret has not been discovered. Not yet.”

A. How does this thought fit in with the larger story of FoTR? That evil can't really figure out what good thinks, which is the whole gamble that everybody's staking their lives on. It has to mean something general like that, because surely Galadriel would not confide the secret of the Ring to her guardsman, when even Aragorn exclaimed, "That should not have been said, even to me!"

B. Why the South Wind?

Because that is quarter from which their destinies call them.

Going down to the foot of the hill, Frodo finds Aragorn standing still with a golden elanor in his hand, wrapped in a fair memory, speaking in Elvish to a person Frodo cannot see. A change seems to have come over Aragorn, for “the grim years were removed from the face of Aragorn, and he seemed clothed in white, a young lord tall and fair”.

C. What has happened? Does Frodo have a vision of Aragorn or has Aragorn changed with the stay in Lórien, a prefiguring of the Aragorn we see in The Two Towers? Or is it something else? I see this not so much as a prefiguring as it is a remembering. Lorien holds off the ravages of time. So in some sense young Aragorn will always propose to Arwen at this spot. When older Aragorn steps into that spot, on a spiritual level he relives the experience in a more vivid way than memory. Frodo's increasingly acute insight sees that--especially since the Ring enhances his perceptions of all things that relate to it, and this holding-back of time comes of a ring tied to the One Ring.

Aragorn says to Frodo:

“Here is the heart of Elvendom on Earth,... and here my heart dwells ever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we still must tread you and I”

Comments?

B. Why the South Wind?
Sam says he feels as if he is inside of a song, and earlier Legolas sang of Amroth, the former King of Lórien and star-crossed lover of Nimrodel . They were lost at sea. Legolas said, “And when the wind is in the South the voice of Amroth comes up from the sea…” Now, “the South Wind blew upon Cerin Amroth and sighed among the branches.” Amroth mourns his lost love.