C S Lewis Poems

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 Arise my body, my small body, we have striven 
Enough, and He is merciful; we are forgiven. 
Arise small body, puppet-like and pale, and go, 
White as the bed-clothes into bed, and cold as snow, 
Undress with small, cold fingers and put out the light, 
And be alone, hush'd mortal, in the sacred night, 
-A meadow whipt flat with...Read more of this...

 Against too many writers of science fiction 

Why did you lure us on like this, 
Light-year on light-year, through the abyss, 
Building (as though we cared for size!) 
Empires that cover galaxies 
If at the journey's end we find 
The same old stuff we left behind, 
Well-worn Tellurian stories of 
Crooks, spies, conspirators, or love, 
Whose setting might as...Read more of this...

 All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned,...Read more of this...

 1

You said 'The world is going back to Paganism'. 
Oh bright Vision! I saw our dynasty in the bar of the House 
Spill from their tumblers a libation to the Erinyes, 
And Leavis with Lord Russell wreathed in flowers, heralded with flutes, 
Leading white bulls to the cathedral of the solemn Muses 
To pay where due the glory of...Read more of this...

 Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future's endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.

Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,
In the present what are they
while there's always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we're going,
We can never go astray.

To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or...Read more of this...

 No. It's an impudent falsehood. Men did not 
Invariably think the newer way Prosaic
mad, inelegant, or what not.

Was the first pointed arch esteemed a blot 
Upon the church? Did anybody say How 
modern and how ugly? They did not.

Plate-armour, or windows glazed, or verse fire-hot 
With rhymes from France, or spices from Cathay, 
Were these at first a horror?...Read more of this...

 Angelic minds, they say, by simple intelligence 
Behold the Forms of nature. They discern 
Unerringly the Archtypes, all the verities 
Which mortals lack or indirectly learn. 
Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying, 
Pure Earthness and right Stonehood from their clear, 
High eminence are seen; unveiled, the seminal 
Huge Principles appear.

The Tree-ness of the tree they know-the meaning of 
Arboreal life,...Read more of this...

 An Epithaliamium

So Man, grown vigorous now,
Holds himself ripe to breed,
Daily devises how
To ejaculate his seed
And boldly fertilize
The black womb of the unconsenting skies.

Some now alive expect
(I am told) to see the large,
Steel member grow erect,
Turgid with the fierce charge
Of our whole planet's skill,
Courage, wealth, knowledge, concentrated will,

Straining with lust to stamp
Our likeness on the abyss-
Bombs, gallows, Belsen camp,
Pox, polio,...Read more of this...

 I thought there would be a grave beauty, a sunset splendour
In being the last of one's kind: a topmost moment as one watched 
The huge wave curving over Atlantis, the shrouded barge 
Turning away with wounded Arthur, or Ilium burning. 
Now I see that, all along, I was assuming a posterity 
Of gentle hearts: someone, however distant in the...Read more of this...

 By and by Man will try 
To get out into the sky, 
Sailing far beyond the air 
From Down and Here to Up and There. 
Stars and sky, sky and stars 
Make us feel the prison bars.

Suppose it done. Now we ride 
Closed in steel, up there, outside 
Through our port-holes see the vast 
Heaven-scape go rushing past. 
Shall...Read more of this...

 There is a wildness still in England that will not feed 
In cages; it shrinks away from the touch of the trainer's hand,
Easy to kill, not easy to tame. It will never breed 
In a zoo for the public pleasure. It will not be planned.

Do not blame us too much if we that are hedgerow folk 
Cannot swell the...Read more of this...

 Hard light bathed them-a whole nation of eyeless men, 
Dark bipeds not aware how they were maimed. A long 
Process, clearly, a slow curse,
Drained through centuries, left them thus.

At some transitional stage, then, a luckless few, 
No doubt, must have had eyes after the up-to-date, 
Normal type had achieved snug
Darkness, safe from the guns of heavn;

Whose blind mouths would...Read more of this...

 Among the hills a meteorite
Lies huge; and moss has overgrown,
And wind and rain with touches light
Made soft, the contours of the stone.

Thus easily can Earth digest
A cinder of sidereal fire,
And make her translunary guest
The native of an English shire.

Nor is it strange these wanderers
Find in her lap their fitting place,
For every particle that's hers
Came at the first from outer...Read more of this...