Poems

by C.S. Lewis

So death lay in arrest. But at Bethlehem the bless’d Nothing greater could be heard Than a dry wind in the thorn, the cry of the One new-born, And cattle in stall as they stirred.

Out of the wound we pluck The shrapnel. Thorns we squeeze Out of the hand. Even poison forth we suck, And after pain have ease. But images that grow Within the soul have life Like cancer and, often cut, live on below The deepest of the knife, Waiting their time to shoot At some defenceless hour Their poison, unimpaired, at the heart’s root, And, like a golden shower, Unanswerably sweet, Bright with returning guilt, Fatally in a moment’s time defeat Our brazen towers long-built; And all our former pain And all our surgeon’s care Is lost, and all the unbearable (in vain Borne once) is still to bear.