Spirits in Bondage

by C.S. Lewis

IV. Victory

Roland is dead, Cuchulain's crest is low,
     The battered war-rear wastes and turns to rust,
     And Helen's eyes and Iseult's lips are dust
     And dust the shoulders and the breasts of snow.

     The faerie people from our woods are gone,
     No Dryads have I found in all our trees,
     No Triton blows his horn about our seas
     And Arthur sleeps far hence in Avalon.

     The ancient songs they wither as the grass
     And waste as doth a garment waxen old,
     All poets have been fools who thought to mould
     A monument more durable than brass.

     For these decay: but not for that decays
     The yearning, high, rebellious spirit of man
     That never rested yet since life began
     From striving with red Nature and her ways.

     Now in the filth of war, the baresark shout
     Of battle, it is vexed. And yet so oft
     Out of the deeps, of old, it rose aloft
     That they who watch the ages may not doubt.

     Though often bruised, oft broken by the rod,
     Yet, like the phoenix, from each fiery bed
     Higher the stricken spirit lifts its head
     And higher-till the beast become a god.