Poems Quotes

“All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.”
― C.S. Lewis, Poems

“All things (e.g. a camel's journey through
A needle's eye) are possible, it's true.
But picture how the camel feels, squeezed out
In one long bloody thread, from tail to snout.”
― C.S. Lewis, Poems

“When Adam ate the irrevocable apple, Thou
Saw'st beyond death the resurrection of the dead”
― C.S. Lewis, Poems

“I am so coarse, the things the poets see
Are obstinately invisible to me”
― C.S. Lewis, Poems

“A new scent troubles the air - to you, friendly perhaps -
But we with animal wisdom have understood that smell.
To all our kind its message is Guns, Ferrets, and Traps,
And a Ministry gassing the little holes in which we dwell.
- From "The Condemned”
― C.S. Lewis, Poems

“Take not, oh Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in Thy great, Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.”
― C.S. Lewis, Poems

“So Man, grown vigorous now, holds himself ripe to breed, daily devises how to ejaculate his seed and boldly fertilize the black womb of the unconsenting skies.”
― C.S. Lewis, Poems