Dymer by C.S. Lewis - Canto 8

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Canto eight of Dymer Diymer by C. S. Lewis, Canto eight.
When next he found himself no house, was there, no
garden in great trees, beside a lane in grass he lay. Now.
First he was aware that all one side his body

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glowed with pain. And the next moment and the next
again was neither less nor more. Without a pause, it
clung like a great beast with fastened claws, that for
a time he could not frame a thought, nor know
himself for self, nor pain for pain, till moment added

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on to moment taught the new strange art of living.
On that plain taught how the grappled soul must still remain, still,
choose and think and understand. Beneath the very grinding of
the ogre's teeth, he heard the wind along the hedges, sweep,
the quarter striking from a neighboring tower. About him was

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the weight of the world's sleep. Within the thundering pane
that quiet hour. Heeded it not, it throbbed, it raged
with power fit to convulse the heavens. And at his
side the soft peace drenched the meadows far and wide.
The air was cold, the earth was cold with dew,

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The hedge behind him dark as ink. But now the
clouds broke, and a paler heaven showed through, spacious, with
sudden stars breathing somehow the sense of change to slumbering lands.
A cow coughed in the fields behind the puddles showed
like pools of sky amid the darker road, and he

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could see his own limbs faintly white, and the blood
black upon them. Then, by chance he turned, and it
was strange. There at his right he saw a woman standing,
and her glance met his, And at the meeting his
deep trance changed not, And while he looked, the knowledge grew.

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She was not of the old life, but the new.
Who is it, he said, the loved one, the long lost.
He stared upon her, truly, truly indeed, O lady, you
come late, I am tempest, tossed, broken and reckt I
am dying. Look, I bleed. Why have you left me

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thus and given no heed to all my prayers? Left
me to be the game of all deceits. You should
have asked my name? What are you? Then? But to
his sudden cry, she did not answer. When he had thought, awhile,
he said, how can I tell? It is no lie?
It may be one more phantom to beguile the brainsick

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dreamer with its harlot smile. I have not smiled, she said.
The neighboring bell told out another quarter. Silence fell, and
after a long pause he spoke again. Leave me, he said,
Why do you watch with me? You do not love me.
Human tears and pain, and hoping for the things that

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cannot be, and blundering in the night where none can see,
and courage with cold back against the wall. You do
not understand. I know them all, the gods themselves, no pain,
the eternal forms in realms beyond the reach of cloud
and skies, near as the ends of air, where come
no storms nor sound of earth. I have looked into

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their eyes, peaceful and filled with pain, beyond surmise, filled
with an ancient woe man cannot reach one moment though
in fire. Yet calm their speech. Then, these, said Daimer,
where the world I wooed. These were the holiness of
flowers and grass and desolate dews. These the eternal mood,

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blowing the eternal theme through men that pass. I called
myself their lover. Ay that was less fit for that
long service than the least dull work day, drudge of men,
or faithful beast? 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

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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. Give me the truth. I ask not
now for pity when God's call? Can the following them
be sin? Was it false light that lured me from

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the city? Where was the path without it? Or within?
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 another silence. Then he cried, in wrath. You came
in human shape, in sweet disguise, wooing me, lurking for

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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? What answered, dymer,
Do you change and sway to serve us? As the

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obedient planets spin about the sun? Are you but Potter's
clay for us to mold? Unholy to our sin and
wholly to the holiness within? She said, waves fall on
many an unclean shore, Yet the salt seas are wholly
as before. Our nature is no purer for the saint

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that worships, nor from him that uses ill our beauty?
Can we suffer any taint 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. Well, it is well, said Daimer. If I

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have used the and breathing spirit, amiss, what would have
been the strength of all my days? I have refused
and plucked the stalk, too hasty in the green, trusted
the good for best, and, having seen half beauty or
beauty's fringe, the lowest stare the common incantation, worshiped there.

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But presently, he cried, in his great pain. If I
had loved a beast, it would repay. But I have
loved the spirit, and loved in vain. Now let me die, Ah,
But before the way is ended, Quite in the last
hour of day. Is there no word of comfort, no
one kiss of human love? Does it all end in this?

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She answered? Never ask of life and death? Uttering these names,
you dream of warmy clay, or of surviving ghosts. This
withering breath of words is the beginning of decay in truth.
When truth grows cold and pines away among the ancestral images,
your eyes first see her dead, and more the more

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she dies. 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 Diimer
dead and on the bier more often than you dream,
and dropped no tear. You have slain him every hour.

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Think not at all of death, lest into death by
thought you fall. He turned to question her, then looked again,
and lo, the shape was gone. The darkness lay heavy
as yet, and a cold, shifting rain fell with the
breeze that springs before the day. It was an hour

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death loves across the way. The clock struck once again.
He saw near by the black shape of the tower
against the sky. Meanwhile, above the torture and the riot
of leaping pulse and nerve that shot with pain somewhere
aloof and poised in spectral quiet. His soul was thinking

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on the dizzied brain, scarce seemed her organ. Link by link,
the chain that bound him to the flesh was loosening fast,
and the new life breathed in, unmoved and vast. It
was like this, he thought, like this or worse for
him that I found bleeding in the wood, blessings upon him.

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There I learned the curse that rests on Dimer's name,
and truth was good. He has forgotten now the fire
and blood. He has forgotten that there was a man
called Dimer. He knows not himself nor Bran. How long
have I been moved at heart, in vain about this Dimer,
thinking this was I? Why did I follow close his

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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. There was a Dimer once
who worked and played about the city. I slept him
off and ran. There was a Dimer in the forest glade,

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ranting alone, skulking the fates of man. I cast him also,
and a third began, and he too died, But I
am none of those. Is there another still to die?
Who knows? Then, in his pain, half wondering what he did,
he made to struggle towards that belfried place, and groaning

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down the sodden bank, he slid and groaning in the lane,
He felt his trace of bloodied mire, then halted with
his face upwards towards the gateway, breathing hard, an old
lych gate before a burial yard. He looked within, between
the huddling crosses, over the slanted tombs and sunken slate,

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spread the deep, quiet grass and humble mosses, a green
and growing darkness, drenched of late, smelling of earth and damp.
He reached the gate with failing hand. I will rest here,
he said, and the long grass will cool my burning head.
End of Canto eight