C. S. Lewis

“ Crooning ‘I am not beautiful as she,
But I’m the older love; you shall love me
Far more than Beauty’s self. You have been ours
Always. We are the world’s most ancient powers.’
31
“First flatterer and then bogy—like a dream!
Sir, are you listening? Do you also know
How close to the soft laughter comes the scream
Down yonder?” But his host cried sharply, “No.
Leave me alone. Why will you plague me? Go!
Out of my house! Begone.”—“With all my heart,”
Said Dymer. “But one word before we part.” ”

“ And eyes on earth, grown dogged, Dymer came,
Who all the long day in the woods had fled
From the horror of those lips that screamed his name
And cursed him. Busy wonder and keen shame
Were driving him, and little thoughts like bees
Followed and pricked him on and left no ease.
[50]
3
Now, when he looked and saw this emptiness
Seven times enfolded in the idle hills,
There came a chilly pause to his distress,
A cloud of the deep world despair that fills
A man’s heart like the incoming tide and kills
All pains except its own. In that broad sea
No hope, no change, and no regret can be. ”

“ Let through the horrors. Oh, could he recall
The deep sleep and the dreams that used to fall
Around him for the asking. But, somehow,
Something’s amiss ... sleep comes so rarely now.
7
Then, like the dog returning to its vomit,
He staggered to the bookcase to renew
Yet once again the taint he had taken from it,
And shuddered as he went. But horror drew
His feet, as joy draws others. There in view
Was his strange heaven and his far stranger hell,
His secret lust, his soul’s dark citadel ”

“ As though it failed at the urge of its own meaning.
It left him with life quivering at the throat,
Limbs shaken and wet cheeks and body leaning,
With strain towards the sound and senses gleaning
The last, least, ebbing ripple of the air,
Searching the emptied darkness, muttering “Where?”
26
Then followed such a time as is forgotten
With morning light, but in the passing seems
Unending. Where he grasped the branch was rotten,
Where he trod forth in haste the forest streams
Laid wait for him. Like men in fever dreams
Climbing an endless rope, he laboured much
And gained no ground. ”

“ The sleeper’s wakening, and the wings of youth.
With crumbling veneration and cowed fear
I make no truce. My loved one, live and dear,
Waits for me. Let me in! I fled the City,
Shall I fear you or ... Mother, ah, for pity.”
29
For his high mood fell shattered. Like a man
Unnerved, in bayonet-fighting, in the thick,
—Full of red rum and cheers when he began,
Now, in a dream, muttering: “I’ve not the trick.
It’s no good. I’m no good. They’re all too quick.
There! Look there! Look at that!” So Dymer stood,
Suddenly drained of hope. It was no good.
[34]
30
He pleaded then. ”

“ You are still dreaming, dreams you shall forget
When you have cast your fetters, far from here.
Go forth, the journey is not ended yet.
You have seen Dymer dead and on the bier
More often than you dream and dropped no tear,
You have slain him every hour. ”

“ There is a City which men call in scorn
The Perfect City—eastward of this wood—
You’ve heard about the place. There I was born.
I’m one of them, their work. Their sober mood,
The ordered life, the laws, are in my blood
—A life ... ”

“ Then, drawing near, when Dymer did not speak,
“My little son,” said he, “your wrong and right
Are also dreams: fetters to bind the weak
Faster to phantom earth and blear the sight.
Wake into dreams, into the larger light
That quenches these frail stars. They will not know
Earth’s bye-laws in the land to which you go.” ”

“ He cried: ‘As Dymer broke, we’ll break the chain.
The world is free. They taught you to be chaste
And labour and bear orders and refrain.
Refrain? From what? All’s good enough. We’ll taste
Whatever is. Life murmurs from the waste
Beneath the mind ... who made the reasoning part
The jailer of the wild gods in the heart?’
25
“We were a ragtail crew—wild-haired, half dressed,
All shouting, ‘Up, for Dymer! Up away!’
Yet each one always watching all the rest
And looking to his back. ”

“ Black-looking, and the boulders dripped with wet:
No bird sang. Dymer, shivering, heaved a sigh
And yawned and said: “It’s cruel work to die
Of hunger”; and again, with cloudy breath
Blown between chattering teeth, “It’s a bad death.” ”

“ Hew down the city, let live earth appear!
—Old men and barren women whom through fear
We have suffered to be masters in our home,
Hide! hide! for we are angry and we come.”
[16]
12
Thus feeding on vain fancy, covering round
His hunger, his great loneliness arraying
In facile dreams until the qualm was drowned,
The boy went on. Through endless arches straying
With casual tread he sauntered, manly playing
At manhood lest more loss of faith betide him,
Till lo! he saw a table set beside him.
13
When Dymer saw this sight, he leaped for mirth,
He clapped his hands, his eye lit like a lover’s. ”

“ Must it be one blind throw to lose or win?
Has heaven no voice to help? Must things of dust
Guess their own way in the dark?” She said, “They must.”
13
Another silence: then he cried in wrath,
“You came in human shape, in sweet disguise
Wooing me, lurking for me in my path,
Hid your eternal cold with woman’s eyes,
Snared me with shows of love—and all was lies.”
She answered, “For our kind must come to all
If bidden, but in the shape for which they call.”
14
“What,” answered Dymer. “Do you change and sway
To serve us, as the obedient planets spin
About the sun? ”

“ Till, blossom after blossom, that rich mood
Faded and truth rolled homeward, like a tide
Before whose edge the weak soul fled to hide
In vain, with ostrich head, through many a shape
Of coward fancy, whimpering for escape.
2
But only for a moment; then his soul
Took the full swell and heaved a dripping prow
Clear of the shattering wave-crest. He was whole.
No veils should hide the truth, no truth should cow
The dear self-pitying heart “I’ll babble now
No longer,” Dymer said. “I’m broken in.
Pack up the dreams and let the life begin.”
[61]
3
With this he turned. ”

“ To sack the Perfect City?... a fool’s deed
For Dymer! Folly of follies I have spoken!
I am the wanderer, new born, newly freed....
A thousand times they have warned me of men’s greed
For joy, for the good that all desire, but never
Till now I knew the wild heat of the endeavour. ”

“ And desolate dews ... these, the eternal mood
Blowing the eternal theme through men that pass.
I called myself their lover—I that was
Less fit for that long service than the least
Dull, workday drudge of men or faithful beast.
11
“Why do they lure to them such spirits as mine,
The weak, the passionate, and the fool of dreams?
When better men go safe and never pine
With whisperings at the heart, soul-sickening gleams
Of infinite desire, and joy that seems
The promise of full power? For it was they,
The gods themselves that led me on this way.
[89]
12
“Give me the truth! ”

“ DYMER
“Nine nights I hung upon the Tree, wounded with the spear, as an offering to Odin, myself sacrificed to myself.”—Havamal.
[v] CONTENTS
[1] DYMER
DYMER
CANTO I
1
You stranger, long before your glance can light
Upon these words, time will have washed away
The moment when I first took pen to write,
With all my road before me—yet to-day,
Here, if at all, we meet; the unfashioned clay
Ready to both our hands; both hushed to see
That which is nowhere yet come forth and be. ”

“ Dymer stood.
The Master pointed; then he looked and saw
How hedges and the funeral quietude
Of black trees fringed the garden like a wood,
And only, in one place, one gap that showed
The blue side of the hills, the white hill-road.
[64]
12
“I have planted fir and larch to fill the gap,”
He said, “because this too makes war upon
The art of dream. But by some great mishap
Nothing I plant will grow there. We pass on....
The sunshine of the afternoon is gone.
Let us go in. It draws near time to sup
—I hate the garden till the moon is up.” ”

“ Ten thousand—ever journeying towards a close
That I shall never reach: for time shall flow,
Wheel within wheel, interminably slow.
35
“And you will drink my cup and go your way
Into the valley of dreams. You have heard the call.
Come hither and escape. Why should you stay?
Earth is a sinking ship, a house whose wall
Is tottering while you sweep; the roof will fall
Before the work is done. You cannot mend it.
Patch as you will, at last the rot must end it.”
[72]
36
Then Dymer lifted up his heavy head
Like Atlas on broad shoulders bearing up
The insufferable globe. ”

“ And wonder if this is the C.C.S.,
Or home, or heaven, or dreams—then sighing win
Wise, ignorant death before the pains begin:
[11]
30
So Dymer in the wood-lawn blessed the light,
A still light, rosy, clear, and filled with sound. ”

“ That rests on Dymer’s name, and truth was good.
He has forgotten now the fire and blood,
He has forgotten that there was a man
Called Dymer. He knows not himself nor Bran.
23
“How long have I been moved at heart in vain
About this Dymer, thinking this was I ...
Why did I follow close his joy and pain
More than another man’s? For he will die,
The little cloud will vanish and the sky
Reigns as before. The stars remain and earth
And Man, as in the years before my birth. ”

“ Wheeled in its thundery circuit, turned, returned.
Still through the dead-leaved darkness, through the slime
Of standing pools and slots of clay storm-churned
Went Dymer. Still the knotty lightning burned
Along black air. He heard the unbroken sound
Of water rising in the hollower ground.
8
He cursed it in his madness, flung it back,
Sorrow as wild as young men’s sorrows are,
Till, after midnight, when the tempest’s track
Drew off, between two clouds appeared one star. ”

“ And out of the wet world the hedgerow scent
Came floating; and the dark without one star
Nor shape of trees nor sense of near and far,
The undimensioned night and formless skies
Were there, and were the Master’s great allies.
[71]
33
“I am very old,” he said. “But if the time
We suffered in our dreams were counting age,
I have outlived the ocean and my prime
Is with me to this day. Years cannot gauge
The dream-life. In the turning of a page,
Dozing above my book, I have lived through
More ages than the lost Lemuria knew.
34
“I am not mortal. ”

“ Of morning dreams (oh, I will teach you, Sir)
There’ll come a sound of wings. Or you shall be
Waked in the midnight murmuring, ‘It was she.’”
22
“No, no,” said Dymer, “not that way. I seem
To have slept for twenty years. Now—while I shake
Out of my eyes that dust of burdening dream,
Now when the long clouds tremble ripe to break
And the far hills appear, when first I wake,
Still blinking, struggling towards the world of men,
And longing—would you turn me back again?
23
“Dreams? ”

“ As from the first we were, so are we still:
With incorruptibles the mortal will
Corrupts itself, and clouded eyes will make
Darkness within from beams they cannot take.”
16
“Well ... it is well,” said Dymer. ”

“ Thro’ winter slush, thro’ summer flowers and grass
One kind of solemn stuff since he was born,
With badge of year and rank. He laughed in scorn
And cried, “Here is no law, nor eye to see,
Nor leave of entry given. Why should there be?
8
“Have done with that—you threw it all behind. ”

“ Patient and wandering-eyed. Then he began,
“Forgive me. You are young. What helps us most
Is to find out again that heavenly ghost
Who loves you. For she was a ghost, and you
In that place where you met were ghostly too.
20
“Listen! for I can launch you on the stream
Will roll you to the shores of her own land....
I could be sworn you never learned to dream,
But every night you take with careless hand
What chance may bring? I’ll teach you to command
The comings and the goings of your spirit
Through all that borderland which dreams inherit.
[67]
21
“You shall have hauntings suddenly. ”