C.S. Lewis Poetry

I bought a book of C.S. Lewis poetry over the summer and I decided to share two of my favorite poems thus far. Enjoy!



Nearly They Stood
Nearly they stood who fall.
Themselves, when they look back,
See always in the track
One torturing spot where all
By a possible quick swerve
Of will yet unenslaved-
By the infinitesimal twitching of a nerve-
Might have been saved.

Nearly they fell who stand.
These with cold after-fear
Look back and note how near
They grazed the Siren's land,
Wondering to think that fate,
By threads so spidery-fine,
The choice of ways so small, the event so great,
Should thus entwine.

Therefore I sometimes fear
Lest oldest fears prove true,
Lest, when no bugle blew
My mort, when skies looked clear,
I may have stepped one hair’s
Breadth past the hair-breadth bourn
Which, being once crossed forever unawares,
Forbids return.


As The Ruin Falls
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, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.