The Philosopher
C. S. Lewis
Who shall be our prophet then, Chosen from all the sons of men To lead his fellows on the way Of hidden knowledge, delving deep To nameless mysteries that keep Their secret from the solar day! Or who shall pierce with surer eye! This shifting veil of bittersweet And find the real things that lie Beyond this turmoil, which we greet With such a wasted wealth of tears? Who shall cross over for us the bridge of fears And pass in to the country where the ancient Mothers dwell? Is it an elder, bent and hoar Who, where the waste Atlantic swell On lonely beaches makes its roar, In his solitary tower Through the long night hour by hour Pores on old books with watery eye When all his youth has passed him by, And folly is schooled and love is dead And frozen fancy laid abed, While in his veins the gradual blood Slackens to a marish flood? For he rejoiceth not in the ocean’s might, Neither the sun giveth delight, Nor the moon by night Shall call his feet to wander in the haunted forest lawn. He shall no more rise suddenly in the dawn When mists are white and the dew lies pearly Cold and cold on every meadow, To take his joy of the season early, The opening flower and the westward shadow, And scarcely can he dream of laughter and love, They lie so many leaden years behind. Such eyes are dim and blind, And the sad, aching head that nods above His monstrous books can never know The secret we would find. But let our seer be young and kind And fresh and beautiful of show, And taken ere the lustyhead And rapture of his youth be dead; Ere the gnawing, peasant reason School him over-deep in treason To the ancient high estate Of his fancy’s principate, That he may live a perfect whole, A mask of the eternal soul, And cross at last the shadowy bar To where the ever-living are.
