Throughout his life, Tolkien wrote love poems to his wife, and in his letters to friends, he writes glowingly about her. But perhaps his most famous and enduring tribute to his beloved bride was weaving his romance with her into the mythology of Middle Earth in the story of Beren and Luthien. A more moving tribute would be hard to find. He wrote to his son, Christopher:

I never called Edith Luthien – but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the Silmarillion. It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire (where I was for a brief time in command of an outpost of the Humber Garrison in 1917, and she was able to live with me for a while). In those days her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing – and dance.

This Tolkien wedding poem (that he wrote to his wife!) is the Arkenstone of wedding readings.. ✨

Lo! Young we are and yet have stood

like planted hearts in the great Sun

of Love so long (as two fair trees

in woodland or in open dale

stand utterly entwined and breathe

the airs and suck the very light

together) that we have become

as one, deep rooted in the soil

of Life and tangled in the sweet growth.

-J.R.R. Tolkien

printed in Carpenter’s biography, Tolkien (1977)

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