by C. S. Lewis
And all the world was falling
And her mind was falling.
Then, on a level with her own, there came
A face to which she could have given a name,250
A face she had seen often (sinking down
Into foamed silvery beard and snowy gown),
And though it looked not as she thought the dead
Would look, she knew it spoke from among the dead,11
‘Quick. The last chance. Believe not the seducing elf.
Daughter, turn back, have pity yet upon yourself
Go not to the unwintering land where they who dwell
Pay each tenth year the tenth soul of their tribe to Hell.
Hear not the voice that promises, but rather hear
His who commands, and fear. We have all cause to fear.260
Oh draw not down the12 anger, which is far away
And slow to wake. Turn homeward ere the end of day.
You would not see if you looked up out of your torment
That face—only the fringes of His outer garment
Run to it, daughter; kiss that hem.’ She answered, ‘No.
If you are with Him pray to Him that He may go,
Or pray that He may rend and tear me,
But go, go hence and not be near me.’
And all the world was falling,
Spirit and soul were falling,270
Body, brain and heart
Vanishing, falling apart;
Vacancy under vacancy
Shuddering gaped below;
‘Go,’ was her prayer, ‘Go,
Go away, go away, away from me.’
And the fear heightened,
The command tautened;
Between her spirit and soul, dividing,
The razor-edged, ice-brook cold command was gliding,280
Till suddenly, at the worst, all changed,
And like a thing far off, estranged,
Only remembered, like a mood,
That dread became. Her mortal blood
Flowed freely in the uncoloured calm,
Which woos13 despair and is its balm.
Nothing now she will ever want again
But to glide out of all the world of men,
Nor will she turn to right or left her head,
But go straight on. She has tasted elven bread.290
And so, the story tells, she passed away
Out of the world: but if she dreams to-day
In fairy land, or if she wakes in Hell,14
(The chance being one in ten) it doesn’t15 tell.
NOTES
NOTE 1
Lewis’s own chronological account of the creation of Dymer, Lewis Papers, vol. IX, pp. 129–30:
The prose version of Dymer.—1916
The ‘Redemption of Ask’.—(In two parts, Lucrece metre.)—October and November 1918
The ‘Red Maid’ (ballad).—1920
Dymer begun.—April 2nd, 1922
Canto I finished.—May 11th, 1922
Canto II finished.—June 1st, 1922
Canto III (A-version) abandoned.—June 22nd, 1922
Canto III (B) finished.—June 29th, 1922
‘Lyrical Epilogue’ for Dymer attempted.—July 8th, 1922
Canto IV finished.—October 8th, 1922
Canto V finished.—March 25th, 1923
Canto V recopied and corrected.—June 27th, 1923
‘Kirkian’ stanzas done for Canto VI.—June 28th, 1923
‘Kirkian’ episode abandoned.—June 29th, 1923
Cantos VI and VII (A-version) finished.—September 8th, 1923. (Village shop and boat.)
Cantos VI and VII condemned by Harwood.—October 21st, 1923
Canto VI (B) finished.—October (?) 1923. (Old Welkin and boat.)
Canto III (C) finished.—January 22nd, 1924. (The cow version.)
Canto VI (C) finished.—March 25th, 1924
Canto IX finished.—March 25th, 1924
Canto VII (B) begun.—April 6th, 1924
Fresh start on Canto VII (B).—April 10th, 1924
Canto VII (B) finished.—(Complete text now in existence. Condemned.)—April 28th, 1924
Canto VI (D) started.—April or May 1924
Canto VI (D) finished.—Before May 23rd, 1924
Canto VII (C) and VIII.—Long Vacation 1925 (?)
Accepted by Dent’s.—April 1st, 1926
NOTE 2
Lewis’s introductory note to his alliterative poem, The Nameless Isle.
Every verse contains two half-verses. Each half-verse contains two beats or accents: and two dips which may consist of any number of unaccented syllables. The dips and beats may be arranged:
a. In falling rhythm (—u—u) (—uu—uu) (—u—uu), etc.
e.g. Eárly at évening
Máster máriner
b. In rising rhythm (u—u—) (uu—uu—) (u—uu), etc.
e.g. of the mén was Í
While fást and fáir
c. In clashing rhythm (uu——uu) (u——u), etc.
e.g. In a spríng seáson
Over our shíp scúdding
d. As beat-dip-beat, without a second dip, if the single dip contains a syllable so strong that it nearly equals a beat (u—) (uu—).
e.g. Eíghteén in áll
wítch-heárted quéen
The reader should read all with its natural accent and carefully avoid the artificial accents of syllabic verse
e.g. Of the séa’s rísing
not, as it would be in the heroic line
Óf the sea’s rísing múch he spoke in vain.
There may be either two or three alliterations in the verse, of which only one can fall in the second half-verse.
All vowels alliterate together.
NOTE 3
Letters from John Masefield to C. S. Lewis about The Queen of Drum. Masefield’s address is given as Pinbury, Cirencester, on all the letters.
Dear Mr Lewis,
Many thanks for the typescript safely received this morning. I will read it at once. With all good wishes,
Yours sincerely,
John Masefield
Dear Mr Lewis,
I could not write to you during the week-end about The Queen of Drum. I wanted to go through it a second time; now I feel, that I must go through it again.
Please let me say now, that I have greatly enjoyed it, and feel an extraordinary beauty in the main theme—the escape of the Queen into Fairyland.
At present, I cannot help feeling, that the design is encumbered. I think that I see your intention, but, as a showman, I find that the second canto, the long talk with the Archbishop and the martydom of the Archbishop, are sagas in themselves, and diminish the poignancy of your main theme. Whenever your Queen appears, there is imagination, beauty and tension.
I wish to read the poem again during today; after that, I will write again; but I want you to have my first impressions for what they are worth, at once.
In any case, let me thank you for a great enjoyment. One might say of your Queen what Yeats’ poet says:
‘She need but lift a pearl pale hand
And all men’s hearts must burn and beat.’
Yours sincerely,
John Masefield
Dear Mr Lewis,
I must apologise for having kept your Queen of Drum rather a long time. I wanted to read it again. I have much enjoyed it, but do feel, that the second canto is wrong, and that the Archbishop makes a saga by himself.
Then, on Page 55, the Crescent moon would not have risen; it would have become visible. It would have been in the sky at sunset, and the sky’s darkening would have let it appear.
Please forgive this little note.
Let me thank you once more for the great pleasure that your poem has given me.
Yours sincerely,
John Masefield
Dear Mr Lewis,
So many thanks for your letter.
I was not troubled about the light later on in
the canto. That passed as the light that never was on sea or land.
I am sorry that I left it in any doubt. Of course, we want the Queen of Drum in the Diversions. It is a very fine thing, and very beautiful; but the great difficulty is one of length. I feel that your story, as it stands, is too long, and that certain incidents in it detach fairly readily from your main theme. If you keep your Chancellor, will you consider getting rid of the Archbishop?
Of course, in matters of poetry,
‘All is, if you have grace to use it so.’
You may have the power of making the Archbishop extraordinarily affecting.
I always feel that modern audiences begin to squirm and shuffle after about forty minutes. Do you think that you could bring the story into this compass?
I am grateful to you for your kind words about my work.
It would be a great pleasure to us both, if you would come over sometime to lunch or tea. This place is only about eighty minutes from Oxford. Will you think of this as a possibility on some Sunday?
Yours sincerely,
John Masefield
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CLIVE STAPLES LEWIS (1898–1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and have been transformed into three major motion pictures.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
ALSO BY C. S. LEWIS
A Grief Observed
George MacDonald: An Anthology
Mere Christianity
Miracles
The Abolition of Man
The Great Divorce
The Problem of Pain
The Screwtape Letters (with “Screwtape Proposes a Toast”)
The Weight of Glory
The Four Loves
Till We Have Faces
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
Reflections on the Psalms
Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer
The Personal Heresy
The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays
Poems
The Dark Tower: And Other Stories
Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories
A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis
Letters of C. S. Lewis
All My Road Before Me
The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings from C. S. Lewis
Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays
Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics
On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM HARPERCOLLINS
The Chronicles of Narnia
The Magician’s Nephew
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Horse and His Boy
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Last Battle
FURTHER READING
CREDITS
Cover design and illustration: Kimberly Glyder
COPYRIGHT
NARRATIVE POEMS. Copyright © 1969 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Preface copyright © 1969 by Walter Hooper. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Originally published in 1969 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Reprinted by Harvest/HBJ in 1979.
EPub Edition February 2017 ISBN 9780062565532
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963, author. | Hooper, Walter, editor.
Title: Narrative poems / C. S. Lewis ; edited by Walter Hooper.
Description: New York : HarperOne, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016030644 | ISBN 9780062643681 (softcover) | ISBN 9780062565532 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Narrative poetry, English.
Classification: LCC PR6023.E926 A6 2017 | DDC 821/.914—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016030644
* * *
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1All 801 lines are preserved in the Lewis Papers, vol. III, pp. 321–26. (The Lewis Papers consist of one set of eleven volumes of letters, diaries, and other family documents in typescript compiled by Major W. H. Lewis from original manuscripts. It is to Major Lewis, who owns the Lewis Papers, that I am indebted for permission to quote from them here.)
2These are the first of 109 lines of Loki Bound found in the Lewis Papers, vol. IV, pp. 218–20.
3Lewis Papers, vol. IV, p. 306. ‘Cod’ is an expression of humorous and insincere self-depreciation.
4A microfilm of all Lewis’s letters to Arthur Greeves can be found in the Bodleian Library. On discovering two trees, the ash (Ask) and the elm (Embla), hewn into rude semblances of the human form, the Norse gods called them into life and caused them to be man and woman.
5Letters of C. S. Lewis, edited with a Memoir by W. H. Lewis, p. 73 (1966).
6See note 1.
7This appears in Lewis’s Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories, ed. Walter Hooper (1966).
8Lewis Papers, vol. VII, p. 281.
9Lewis Papers, vol. VIII, p. 150.
10Old English for ‘I know not whom’.
11An even better introduction is Lewis’s essay ‘The Alliterative Metre’ in his Selected Literary Essays, ed. Walter Hooper (Cambridge, 1969).
12Lewis Papers, vol. IX, p. 143.
13Lewis Papers, vol. IX, p. 146.
14Lewis Papers, vol. IX, p. 155.
15Lewis Papers, vol. IX, p. 162.
1they say, this winter season, answered
2Lines 70–71 originally:
Stirred like a babe within her and woke; and wide
Prospects of woe and pits of deep dismay, with tears
3and
4on new fashioned
5open
6struck with the sun
7on
8and down by winding
9seemed
1sail
2two
3bright
4sc
andal. Then;
5For life is loathed by
6drinking
7brews
8the
9You belly [illegible]
10among them
11Of
12Deftly the dwarf
13before
14night sky
15huge-seeming
16stealing
17Backward gazing
1To the guarded king
2The unending
3clear
4there
5the
6subject.’ . . .
Lost, once more, the thread . . .
Something like ‘fans the brow’ and ‘fevered head’,
Then ‘rough affection’ . . . ‘dutifully . . .
7felt not heard
8moment
9Of secrets, ask your fill. Come all, the cup
10breaking
11a sword
