Tolkien links

CS Lewis and Tolkiens' conversation about myths and Christianity is one reason Lewis decided to become a Christian...Tolkien later wrote a poem summarizing his argument...and later, in his famous lecture on Beowulf, Tolkien recited part of that poem...

The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seeds of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.

But I didn't realize that the poem was much longer than what he quoted, and Quenta Narwean blog has the entire poem at the above link...the part he did not quote in his lecture concerns his aim in writing:

I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
....
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.

And in another post, QN has THIS LINK to a pdf file of the poem Crist...
""Lo ! Thou Splendor of the dayspring, fairest of angels sent to men upon earth..."

This is a translation of

Éala Éarendel Engla Beorhtast
Ofer Middangeard Monnum Sended

A closer rendering would be

"Hail, Earendel, brightest of angels
Over Middle-earth sent to men..."

These lines intrigued the young Tolkien, who developed the character and story of Eärendil from this slender hint. This was one of the earliest seeds of the entire Legendarium..."