Spirits in Bondage

A Cycle of Lyrics

C.S. Lewis

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781683593713
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Poesia religiosa

A rare glimpse of a young C. S. Lewis. Spirits in Bondage reveals the earliest published thoughts of C. S. Lewis. However, we find an unfamiliar Lewis--not the mature Christian but the young atheist cynic, who fought in the harrowing Great War. In these poems Lewis dreads the dangerous world that keeps us from living meaningful lives. Introduced by Karen Swallow Prior, this beautiful print edition of Spirits in Bondage will nuance our understanding of C. S. Lewis.

PART I

THE PRISON HOUSE

I

SATAN SPEAKS

I am Nature, the Mighty Mother,

I am the law: ye have none other.

I am the flower and the dewdrop fresh,

I am the lust in your itching flesh.

I am the battle’s filth and strain,

I am the widow’s empty pain.

I am the sea to smother your breath,

I am the bomb, the falling death.

I am the fact and the crushing reason

To thwart your fantasy’s new-born treason.

I am the spider making her net,

I am the beast with jaws blood-wet.

I am a wolf that follows the sun

And I will catch him ere day be done.

II

FRENCH NOCTURNE

(MONCHY-LE-PREUX)

Long leagues on either hand the trenches spread

And all is still; now even this gross line

Drinks in the frosty silences divine,

The pale, green moon is riding overhead.

The jaws of a sacked village, stark and grim,

Out on the ridge have swallowed up the sun,

And in one angry streak his blood has run

To left and right along the horizon dim.

There comes a buzzing plane: and now, it seems

Flies straight into the moon. Lo! where he steers

Across the pallid globe and surely nears

In that white land some harbour of dear dreams!

False, mocking fancy! Once I too could dream,

Who now can only see with vulgar eye

That he’s no nearer to the moon than I

And she’s a stone that catches the sun’s beam.

What call have I to dream of anything?

I am a wolf. Back to the world again,

And speech of fellow-brutes that once were men

Our throats can bark for slaughter: cannot sing.

III

THE SATYR

When the flowery hands of spring

Forth their woodland riches fling,

Through the meadows, through the valleys

Goes the satyr carolling.

From the mountain and the moor,

Forest green and ocean shore

All the faerie kin he rallies

Making music evermore.

See! the shaggy pelt doth grow

On his twisted shanks below,

And his dreadful feet are cloven

Though his brow be white as snow—

Though his brow be clear and white

And beneath it fancies bright,

Wisdom and high thoughts are woven

And the musics of delight,

Though his temples too be fair

Yet two horns are growing there

Bursting forth to part asunder

All the riches of his hair.

Faerie maidens he may meet

Fly the horns and cloven feet,

But, his sad brown eyes with wonder

Seeing—stay from their retreat.

IV

VICTORY

Roland is dead, Cuchulain’s crest is low,

The battered war-gear wastes and turns to rust,

And Helen’s eyes and Iseult’s lips are dust

And dust the shoulders and the breasts of snow.

The faerie people from our woods are gone,

No Dryads have I found in all our trees,

No Triton blows his horn about our seas

And Arthur sleeps far hence in Avalon.

The ancient songs they wither as the grass

And waste as doth a garment waxen old,

All poets have been fools who thought to mould

A monument more durable than brass.

For these decay: but not for that decays

The yearning, high, rebellious spirit of man

That never rested yet since life began

From striving with red Nature and her ways.

Now in the filth of war, the baresark shout

Of battle, it is vexed. And yet so oft

Out of the deeps, of old, it rose aloft

That they who watch the ages may not doubt.

Though often bruised, oft broken by the rod,

Yet, like the phoenix, from each fiery bed

Higher the stricken spirit lifts its head

And higher—till the beast become a...