song for a weary pilgrim


My heart is empty. All the fountains that should run 

With longing, are in me

Dried up. In all my countryside there is not one 

That drips to find the sea.

I have no care for anything thy love can grant 

Except the moment's vain

And hardly noticed filling of the moment's want 

And to be free from pain.

Oh, thou that art unwearying, that dost neither sleep 

Nor slumber, who didst take

All care for Lazarus in the careless tomb, oh keep

Watch for me till I wake.

If thou think for me that I cannot think, if thou

Desire for me what I 

Cannot desire, my soul's interior Form, though now 

Deep-buried, will not die,

-- No more than the insensible dropp'd seed which grows

Through winter ripe for birth 

Because, while it forgets, the heaven remembering throws 

Sweet influence still on earth,

-- Because the heaven, moved moth-like by thy beauty, goes

Still turning round the earth.  


C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress (1932)


Image credit: sculpture by Speyer, on the Santiago de Compostela, Wikimedia. 

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