J. R. R. Tolkien was a poet at heart. Charmed by the sound of language, he was influenced by everything from the poem The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson to the plays of William Shakespeare to the Book of Isaiah to Anglo-Saxon works such as Beowulf and Christ I, a 10th-century Old English poem that begins with these lines: 

“Hail Earendel, brightest of angels,
Sent to men over middle-earth,
And true radiance of the sun,
Fine beyond stars, you always illuminate
From yourself, every season!”

Tolkien called the lines “remote and strange and beautiful,” saying they made something come alive within him. They inspired one of his early poems, published in 1914, when he was only 22 years old. According to his son Christopher Tolkien, the literary executor of his father’s work, Christ I set in motion his writing career.

In his new book, The Tower and the Ruin, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Creation, English professor Michael Drout delves into Tolkien’s life and work while reminiscing about his own father and........

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