Man the Sub-Creator

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 sowed the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.

—from J.R.R. Tolkien, Mythopoeia, The Tolkien Reader p74, quoted in Bruner and Ware, Finding God in the Lord of the Rings, p111.