When we hear the name C.S. Lewis most people typically think of Narnia and Aslan, Mere Christianity, or The Screwtape Letters, for they are some of his most popular writings. Rarely, however, will anyone think of his poetic work Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics, but poetry was his first love and it was poetry for which he thought he would someday be famous.
I happened upon Spirits in Bondage a number of years ago and, to be quite honest, I had fairly low expectations as these were poems written in 1919 prior to his attending Oxford and certainly well before becoming the man we know today. But I was quite pleasantly surprised, as I believe you will be should you choose to read through this small book of his poetry.
But, Spirits in Bondage is not merely a random collection of poetry, rather it is a well-orchestrated symphony written in three movements: Part I: The Prison House, Part II: Hesitation, and Part III: The Escape. (Those familiar with Plato’s Allegory of the Cave should understand Lewis’ progression in this work by these names.) While each poem can, and does, stand on its own, they are best read as pieces of a greater whole.
In Part I: The Prison House his poems echo the empty loss we feel when looking upon this world — this world which seems to hint of something greater — and yet, we find that all that which we look to is ultimately empty and dead. Lewis writes in Apology,
Is it good to tell old tales of Troynovant
Of praises of dead heroes, tried and sage,
Or sing of queens of unforgotten age,
Brynhild and Maeve and virgin Bradamant?
How should I sing of them? Can it be good
To think of glory now, when all is done,
And all our
Has brought us this — and not the thing we would?
His poems in Part II: Hesitation, places us in between this world we touch and feel and the reality which stands behind it. Will we take the leap and reach out to those truths which ever silently call us or do we fall back and take refuge in only those things we see and feel? In L’Apprenti Sorcier, Lewis says:
As are the Children of the deep!
Be bold and dare the glorious leap,
Or to thy shame, go, slink again
Back to the narrow ways of men.
So all these mocked me as I stood
Striving to wake because I feared the flood.
And in Part III: The Escape we finally catch a glimpse of what it is to leap toward that “true myth,” as Lewis and Tolkien called it. In Songs of the Pilgrims, Lewis concludes:
But by the very God, we know, we know
That somewhere still, beyond the Northern snow
Waiting for us the red-rose gardens blow.
If for no other reason than the sheer beauty of many of these poems and the brilliance of this work as a whole I recommend this short work. But I also recommend Spirits in Bondage for the fact that these poems were penned and published by Lewis at the age of 21, over a decade before he returned to Christianity while he was firmly entrenched in atheism, showing that The Teacher of Ecclesiastes was correct in saying “he has put eternity into man’s heart.” We long for this world to have a meaning and depth beyond that which we see and touch on a daily basis, and until we find it, as Augustine said, “our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Spirits In Bondage can be purchased at Amazon by following this link.
Spirits In Bondage can be downloaded for free by following this link.
