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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
    Ebook85 pages51 minutes

    Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics

    By C. S. Lewis

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A repackaged edition of the revered author’s first book—a collection of poems, written in the wake of World War I, in which the young intellectual and soldier wrestles with the perplexing polarities of life, including love and war, evil and goodness, and other complex dichotomies.

    In 1919, C. S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—published his first book, Spirits in Bondage, under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton. Written when Lewis was a student at Oxford and during the war when he served at the front in France, Spirits in Bondage reflects the intellectual and spiritual struggles of a young man wounded by war and conflicted over faith. As he contemplates the nature of morality, love, the presence of evil, the possibility of God, and other profound questions. Lewis reveals a side of himself unfamiliar to many readers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateFeb 14, 2017
    ISBN9780062565600
    Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics
    Author

    C. S. Lewis

    Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) fue uno de los intelectuales más importantes del siglo veinte y podría decirse que fue el escritor cristiano más influyente de su tiempo. Fue profesor particular de Literatura Inglesa y miembro de la junta de gobierno de la Universidad de Oxford hasta 1954, cuando fue nombrado profesor de Literatura Medieval y Renacentista en la Universidad de Cambridge, cargo que desempeñó hasta su jubilación. Sus contribuciones a la crítica literaria, la literatura infantil, la literatura fantástica y la teología popular le trajeron fama y aclamación a nivel internacional. C. S. Lewis escribió más de treinta libros, lo cual le permitió llegar a un público amplísimo, y sus obras aún atraen a miles de nuevos lectores cada año. Entre sus más distinguidas y populares obras están Las crónicas de Narnia, Los cuatro amores, Cartas del diablo a su sobrino y Mero cristianismo.

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    • 4/5
      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.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Very moving book of poetry. Some very dark and grappling. This was Lewis after the War but before Christ. A glimpse of a soldier's soul, wrestling with God, human nature, and pain.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Spirits in Bondage - C. S. Lewis

    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

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