Ode For New Year's Day
C. S. Lewis
Woe unto you, ye sons of pain that are this day in earth, Now cry for all your torment: now curse your hour of birth And the fathers who begat you to a portion nothing worth. And Thou, my own beloved, for as brave as ere thou art, Bow down thine head, Despoina, clasp thy pale arms over it, Lie low with fast-closed eyelids, clenched teeth, enduring heart, For sorrow on sorrow is coming wherein all flesh has part. The sky above is sickening, the clouds of God’s hate cover it, Body and soul shall suffer beyond all word or thought, Till the pain and noisy terror that these first years have wrought Seem but the soft arising and prelude of the storm That fiercer still and heavier with sharper lightnings fraught Shall pour red wrath upon us over a world deform. Thrice happy, O Despoina, were the men who were alive In the great age and the golden age when still the cycle ran On upward curve and easily, for them both maid and man And beast and tree and spirit in the green earth could thrive. But now one age is ending, and God calls home the stars And looses the wheel of the ages and sends it spinning back Amid the death of nations, and points a downward track, And madness is come over us and great and little wars. He has not left one valley, one isle of fresh and green Where old friends could forgather amid the howling wreck. It’s vainly we are praying. We cannot, cannot check The Power who slays and puts aside the beauty that has been. It’s truth they tell, Despoina, none hears the heart’s complaining For Nature will not pity, nor the red God lend an ear, Yet I too have been mad in the hour of bitter paining And lifted up my voice to God, thinking that he could hear The curse wherewith I cursed Him because the Good was dead. But lo! I am grown wiser, knowing that our own hearts Have made a phantom called the Good, while a few years have sped Over a little planet. And what should the great Lord know of it Who tosses the dust of chaos and gives the suns their parts? Hither and thither he moves them; for an hour we see the show of it: Only a little hour, and the life of the race is done. And here he builds a nebula, and there he slays a sun And works his own fierce pleasure. All things he shall fulfill, And O, my poor Despoina, do you think he ever hears The wail of hearts he has broken, the sound of human ill? He cares not for our virtues, our little hopes and fears, And how could it all go on, love, if he knew of laughter and tears? Ah, sweet, if a man could cheat him! If you could flee away Into some other country beyond the rosy West, To hide in the deep forests and be for ever at rest From the rankling hate of God and the outworn world’s decay!
