Evensong

by C. S. Lewis

Now that night is creeping
O'er our travail'd senses,
To Thy care unsleeping
We commit our sleep.
Nature for a season
Conquers our defences,
But th' eternal Reason
Watch and ward will keep.

All the soul we render
Back to Thee completely,
Trusting Thou wilt tend her
Through the deathlike hours,
And all night remake her
To Thy likeness sweetly,
Then with dawn awake her
And give back her powers.

Slumber's less uncertain
Brother soon will bind us
—Darker falls the curtain,
Stifling-close 'tis drawn:
But amidst that prison
Still Thy voice can find us,
And, as Thou has risen,
Raise us in Thy dawn.

(from Poems, C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper)

The Apologist's Evening Prayer

by C. S. Lewis

From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
From all the victories that I seemed to score;
From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of Thy divinity,
Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead
of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.
From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,
O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and the needle's eye,
Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.

(from Poems, C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper)

Stephen to Lazarus

by C. S. Lewis

But was I the first martyr, who
Gave up no more than life, while you,
Already free among the dead,
Your rags stripped off, your fetters shed,
Surrendered what all other men
Irrevocably keep, and when
Your battered ship at anchor lay
Seemingly safe in the dark bay
No ripple stirs, obediently
Put out a second time to sea
Well knowing that your death (in vain
Died once) must all be died again?

(from Poems, C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper)

Prayer

by C. S. Lewis

Master, they say that when I seem
   To be in speech with you,
Since you make no replies, it's all a dream
   —One talker aping two.

They are half right, but not as they
   Imagine; rather, I
Seek in myself the things I meant to say,
   And lo! the wells are dry.

Then, seeing me empty, you forsake
   The Listener's role, and through
My dead lips breathe and into utterance wake
   The thoughts I never knew.

And thus you neither need reply
   Nor can; thus, while we seem
Two talking, thou art One forever, and I
   No dreamer, but thy dream.

(from Poems, C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper)

Late Summer

I, dusty and bedraggled as I am,
Pestered with wasps and weeds and making jam,
Blowzy and stale, my welcome long outstayed,
Proved false in every promise that I made,
At my beginning I believed, like you,
Something would come of all my green and blue.
Mortals remember, looking on the thing
I am, that I, even I, was once a spring.

(C. S. Lewis)