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    Spirits in bondage; a cycle of lyrics
    Spirits in bondage; a cycle of lyrics
    Spirits in bondage; a cycle of lyrics
    Ebook96 pages44 minutes

    Spirits in bondage; a cycle of lyrics

    By C. S. (Clive Staples) Lewis

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 15, 2013
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      C. S. Lewis (1898 – 1963) was a scholar, and a writer. Beside scholarly publications, he wrote and published novels and a small body of poetry. Having fallen away from his faith in his youth, becoming an atheist at the age of 15, he regressed to theism in 1929, and converted to Christianity in 1931, becoming a member in the Church of England. Following his conversion he became an apologist of the Christian, and published many books exploring religious questions.Spirits in bondage. A cycle of lyrics was published in 1919, when C. S. Lewis was just 20 years old. It is a difficult cycle of poems, dark and gloomy, and packed with references to Irish-Celtic mythology, as well as Classical mythology. The cycle consists of three parts: (I) The Prison House, (II) Hesitation and (III) The Escape, consisting of 40 poems and a Prologue. The cycle suggests a progression from (Winter, through Spring), Summer and Autumn (in Part 1); the following parts contain no references to the seasons.The dark atmosphere of the cycle can be ascribed to Lewis's experience in the Great War. Despite his atheism, his interest in the occult speaks through the place given in the poems to Satan, sorcery (ghosts and witches) and the ruthlessness of nature. Fear and hesitation are the effects of these brutal forces. Poem (II) French Nocturne (Monchy-Le-Preux) speaks explicitly of the horror of the war, the trenches, bombing and sacked villages.Another theme, apparent, is homesickness. While the Phoenicians describe and long for a Paradise in the West, the Garden of the Hesperides, Lewis's longing for the Tin Isles is a longing for home and the steadfastness of that home as expressed in the poems In Praise Of Solid People (XXIV) and Oxford (XXX).The cycle also describes a turn in fate of the spirit, over the course of a day, from Night, To Sleep, Noon, Autumn Morning and Night, again, the mood swings from Despair, to desolation, to an idle hope in dreams and revelry, and back to despair, the way out only to be found in death.Superficially, the poems could be seen as an adolescents verbal Symphonie fantastique; however, since they were written by C.S. Lewis they deserve closer scrutiny. Regarding his professed atheism, the religious overtones of the poems are remarkable, particularly the references to Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.Milton Read Again (In Surrey)Three golden months while summer on us stoleI have read your joyful tale another time,Breathing more freely in that larger climeAnd learning wiselier to deserve the whole.Your Spirit, Master, has been close at handAnd guided me, still pointing treasures rare,Thick-sown where I before saw nothing fairAnd finding waters in the barren land,Barren once thought because my eyes were dim.Like one I am grown to whom the common fieldAnd often-wandered copse one morning yieldNew pleasures suddenly; for over himFalls the weird spirit of unexplained delight,New mystery in every shady place,In every whispering tree a nameless grace,New rapture on the windy seaward height.So may she come to me, teaching me wellTo savour all these sweets that lie to handIn wood and lane about this pleasant landThough it be not the land where I would dwell.Spirits in bondage. A cycle of lyrics is the only work of C.S. Lewis in the public domain. I enjoyed listening to the Librivox recording, and have reread the poems several times, using the etext from the Project Gutenberg.Rereading is a must, for a complex work like this.

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    Spirits in bondage; a cycle of lyrics - C. S. (Clive Staples) Lewis

    Project Gutenberg's Spirits in Bondage, by (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

    Title: Spirits in Bondage

    Author: (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis

    Release Date: November 7, 2008 [EBook #2003]

    Last Updated: February 4, 2013

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPIRITS IN BONDAGE ***

    Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger

    SPIRITS IN BONDAGE

    A CYCLE OF LYRICS

    By Clive Hamilton [C. S. Lewis]

    CONTENTS

    Historical Background.      

    Prologue.      

    Part I. 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)

    XXI.   The Autumn Morning

    Part II. Hesitation.     

    XXIII.   Alexandrines

    XXIV.   In Praise of Solid People

    Part III. The Escape.     

    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

    In Three Parts

         I.    The Prison House

         II.   Hesitation

         III.  The Escape

                            "The land where I shall never be

                            The love that I shall never see"

    Historical Background

    Published under the pseudonym, Clive Hamilton, Spirits in Bondage was C. S. Lewis' first book. Released in 1919 by Heinemann, it was reprinted in 1984 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and included in Lewis' 1994 Collected Poems. It is the first of Lewis' major published works to enter the public domain in the United States. Readers should be aware that in other countries it may still be under copyright protection.

    Most of the poems appear to have been written between 1915 and 1918, a period during which Lewis was a student under W. T. Kirkpatrick, a military trainee at Oxford, and a soldier serving in the trenches of World War I. Their outlook varies from Romantic expressions of love for the beauty and simplicity of nature to cynical statements about the presence of evil in this world. In a September 12, 1918 letter to his friend Arthur Greeves, Lewis said that his book was, mainly strung around the idea that I mentioned to you before—that nature is wholly diabolical & malevolent and that God, if he exists, is outside of and in opposition to the cosmic arrangements. In his cynical poems, Lewis is dealing with the same questions about evil in nature that Alfred Lord Tennyson explored from a position of troubled faith in In Memoriam A. H. (Stanzas 54f). In a letter written perhaps to reassure his father, Lewis claimed, You know who the God I blaspheme is and that it is not the God that you or I worship, or any other Christian.

    Whatever Lewis believed at that time, the attitude in many of these poems is quite different from the attitude he expressed in his many Christian books from the 1930s on. Attempts in movies and on stage plays to portray Lewis as a sheltered professor who knew little about pain until the death of his wife late in life, have to deal not only with the many tragedies he experienced from a boy on, but also with the disturbing issues he faced in many of these early poems.

    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

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