Spirits in Bondage

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE: THE PRISON HOUSE

  I SATAN SPEAKS

  II FRENCH NOCTURNE (MONCHY-LE-PREUX)

  III THE SATYR

  IV VICTORY

  V IRISH NOCTURNE

  VI SPOOKS

  VII APOLOGY

  VIII ODE FOR NEW YEAR’S DAY

  IX NIGHT

  X TO SLEEP

  XI IN PRISON

  XII DE PROFUNDIS

  XIII SATAN SPEAKS

  XIV THE WITCH

  XV DUNGEON GRATES

  XVI THE PHILOSOPHER

  XVII THE OCEAN STRAND

  XVIII NOON

  XIX MILTON READ AGAIN (IN SURREY)

  XX SONNET

  XXI THE AUTUMN MORNING

  PART TWO: HESITATION

  XXII L’APPRENTI SORCIER

  XXIII ALEXANDRINES

  XXIV IN PRAISE OF SOLID PEOPLE

  PART THREE: THE ESCAPE

  XXV SONG OF THE PILGRIMS

  XXVI SONG

  XXVII THE ASS

  XXVIII BALLADE MYSTIQUE

  XXIX NIGHT

  XXX OXFORD

  XXXI HYMN (FOR BOYS’ VOICES)

  XXXII ‘OUR DAILY BREAD’

  XXXIII HOW HE SAW ANGUS THE GOD

  XXXIV THE ROADS

  XXXV HESPERUS

  XXXVI THE STAR BATH

  XXXVII TU NE QUAESIERIS

  XXXVIII LULLABY

  XXXIX WORLD’S DESIRE

  XL DEATH IN BATTLE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY C. S. LEWIS

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  PROLOGUE

  As of old Phoenician men, to the Tin Isles sailing

  Straight against the sunset and the edges of the earth,

  Chaunted loud above the storm and the strange sea’s wailing,

  Legends of their people and the land that gave them birth—

  Sang aloud to Baal-Peor, sang unto the horned maiden,

  Sang how they should come again with the Brethon treasure laden,

  Sang of all the pride and glory of their hardy enterprise,

  How they found the outer islands, where the unknown stars arise;

  And the rowers down below, rowing hard as they could row,

  Toiling at the stroke and feather through the wet and weary weather,

  Even they forgot their burden in the measure of a song,

  And the merchants and the masters and the bondsmen all together,

  Dreaming of the wondrous islands, brought the gallant ship along;

  So in mighty deeps alone on the chainless breezes blown

  In my coracle of verses I will sing of lands unknown,

  Flying from the scarlet city where a Lord that knows no pity,

  Mocks the broken people praying round his iron throne,

  Sing about the Hidden Country fresh and full of quiet green.

  Sailing over seas uncharted to a port that none has seen.

  PART ONE

  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 music 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-rear 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 god.

  V

  IRISH NOCTURNE

  Now the grey mist comes creeping up

  From the waste ocean’s weedy strand

  And fills the valley, as a cup

  Is filled of evil drink in a wizard’s hand;

  And t
he trees fade out of sight,

  Like dreary ghosts unhealthily,

  Into the damp, pale night,

  Till you almost think that a clearer eye could see

  Some shape come up of a demon seeking apart

  His meat, as Grendel sought in Harte

  The thanes that sat by the wintry log—

  Grendel or the shadowy mass

  Of Balor, or the man with the face of clay,

  The grey, grey walker who used to pass

  Over the rock-arch nightly to his prey.

  But here at the dumb, slow stream where the willows hang,

  With never a wind to blow the mists apart,

  Bitter and bitter it is for thee. O my heart,

  Looking upon this land, where poets sang,

  Thus with the dreary shroud

  Unwholesome, over it spread,

  And knowing the fog and the cloud

  In her people’s heart and head

  Even as it lies for ever upon her coasts

  Making them dim and dreamy lest her sons should ever arise

  And remember all their boasts;

  For I know that the colourless skies

  And the blurred horizons breed

  Lonely desire and many words and brooding and never a deed.

  VI

  SPOOKS

  Last night I dreamed that I was come again

  Unto the house where my beloved dwells

  After long years of wandering and pain.

  And I stood out beneath the drenching rain

  And all the street was bare, and black with night,

  But in my true love’s house was warmth and light.

  Yet I could not draw near nor enter in,

  And long I wondered if some secret sin

  Or old, unhappy anger held me fast;

  Till suddenly it came into my head

  That I was killed long since and lying dead—

  Only a homeless wraith that way had passed.

  So thus I found my true love’s house again

  And stood unseen amid the winter night

  And the lamp burned within, a rosy light,

  And the wet street was shining in the rain.

  VII

  APOLOGY

  If men should ask, Despoina, why I tell

  Of nothing glad nor noble in my verse

  To lighten hearts beneath this present curse

  And build a heaven of dreams in real hell,

  Go you to them and speak among them thus:

  ‘There were no greater grief than to recall,

  Down in the rotting grave where the lithe worms crawl,

  Green fields above that smiled so sweet to us.’

  Is it good to tell old tales of Troynovant

  Or praises of dead heroes, tried and sage,

  Or sing the queens of unforgotten age,

  Brynhild and Maeve and virgin Bradamant?

  How should I sing of them? Can it be good

  To think of glory now, when all is done,

  And all our labour underneath the sun

  Has brought us this—and not the thing we would?

  All these were rosy visions of the night,

  The loveliness and wisdom feigned of old.

  But now we wake. The East is pale and cold,

  No hope is in the dawn, and no delight.

  VIII

  ODE FOR NEW YEAR’S DAY

  Woe unto you, ye sons of pain that are this day in earth,

  Now cry for all your torment: now curse your hour of birth

  And the fathers who begat you to a portion nothing worth.

  And Thou, my own beloved, for as brave as ere thou art,

  Bow down thine head, Despoina, clasp thy pale arms over it,

  Lie low with fast-closed eyelids, clenched teeth, enduring heart,

  For sorrow on sorrow is coming wherein all flesh has part.

  The sky above is sickening, the clouds of God’s hate cover it,

  Body and soul shall suffer beyond all word or thought,

  Till the pain and noisy terror that these first years have wrought

  Seem but the soft arising and prelude of the storm

  That fiercer still and heavier with sharper lightnings fraught

  Shall pour red wrath upon us over a world deform.

  Thrice happy, O Despoina, were the men who were alive

  In the great age and the golden age when still the cycle ran

  On upward curve and easily, for them both maid and man

  And beast and tree and spirit in the green earth could thrive.

  But now one age is ending, and God calls home the stars

  And looses the wheel of the ages and sends it spinning back

  Amid the death of nations, and points a downward track,

  And madness is come over us and great and little wars.

  He has not left one valley, one isle of fresh and green

  Where old friends could forgather amid the howling wreck.

  It’s vainly we are praying. We cannot, cannot check

  The Power who slays and puts aside the beauty that has been.

  It’s truth they tell, Despoina, none hears the heart’s complaining

  For Nature will not pity, nor the red God lend an ear,

  Yet I too have been mad in the hour of bitter paining

  And lifted up my voice to God, thinking that he could hear

  The curse wherewith I cursed Him because the Good was dead.

  But lo! I am grown wiser, knowing that our own hearts

  Have made a phantom called the Good, while a few years have sped

  Over a little planet. And what should the great Lord know of it

  Who tosses the dust of chaos and gives the suns their parts?

  Hither and thither he moves them; for an hour we see the show of it:

  Only a little hour, and the life of the race is done.

  And here he builds a nebula, and there he slays a sun

  And works his own fierce pleasure. All things he shall fulfill,

  And O, my poor Despoina, do you think he ever hears

  The wail of hearts he has broken, the sound of human ill?

  He cares not for our virtues, our little hopes and fears,

  And how could it all go on, love, if he knew of laughter and tears?

  Ah, sweet, if a man could cheat him! If you could flee away

  Into some other country beyond the rosy West,

  To hide in the deep forests and be for ever at rest

  From the rankling hate of God and the outworn world’s decay!

  IX

  NIGHT

  After the fret and failure of this day,

  And weariness of thought, O Mother Night,

  Come with soft kiss to soothe our care away

  And all our little tumults set to right;

  Most pitiful of all death’s kindred fair,

  Riding above us through the curtained air

  On thy dusk car, thou scatterest to the earth

  Sweet dreams and drowsy charms of tender might

  And lovers’ dear delight before to-morrow’s birth.

  Thus art thou wont thy quiet lands to leave

  And pillared courts beyond the Milky Way,

  Wherein thou tarriest all our solar day

  While unsubstantial dreams before thee weave

  A foamy dance, and fluttering fancies play

  About thy palace in the silver ray

  Of some far, moony globe. But when the hour,

  The long-expected comes, the ivory gates

  Open on noiseless hinge before thy bower

  Unbidden, and the jewelled chariot waits

  With magic steeds. Thou from the fronting rim

  Bending to urge them, whilst thy sea-dark hair

  Falls in ambrosial ripples o’er each limb,

  With beautiful pale arms, untrammelled, bare

  For horsemanship, to those twin chargers fleet

  Dost give full rein across
the fires that glow

  In the wide floor of heaven, from off their feet

  Scattering the powdery star-dust as they go.

  Come swiftly down the sky, O Lady Night,

  Fall through the shadow-country, O most kind,

  Shake out thy strands of gentle dreams and light

  For chains, wherewith thou still art used to bind

  With tenderest love of careful leeches’ art

  The bruised and weary heart

  In slumber blind.

  X

  TO SLEEP

  I will find out a place for thee, O Sleep—

  A hidden wood among the hill-tops green,

  Full of soft streams and little winds that creep

  The murmuring boughs between.

  A hollow cup above the ocean placed

  Where nothing rough, nor loud, nor harsh shall be,

  But woodland light and shadow interlaced

  And summer sky and sea.

  There in the fragrant twilight I will raise

  A secret altar of the rich sea sod,

  Whereat to offer sacrifice and praise

  Unto my lonely god:

  Due sacrifice of his own drowsy flowers,

  The deadening poppies in an ocean shell

  Round which through all forgotten days and hours

  The great seas wove their spell.

  So may he send me dreams of dear delight

  And draughts of cool oblivion, quenching pain,

  And sweet, half-wakeful moments in the night

  To hear the falling rain.

  And when he meets me at the dusk of day

  To call me home for ever, this I ask—

  That he may lead me friendly on that way

  And wear no frightful mask.

  XI

  IN PRISON

  I cried out for the pain of man,

  I cried out for my bitter wrath

  Against the hopeless life that ran

  For ever in a circling path

  From death to death since all began;

  Till on a summer night

  I lost my way in the pale starlight

  And saw our planet, far and small,

  Through endless depths of nothing fall

  A lonely pin-prick spark of light,

  Upon the wide, enfolding night,

  With leagues on leagues of stars above it,

  And powdered dust of stars below—

  Dead things that neither hate nor love it