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    Poems of Conformity
    Poems of Conformity
    Poems of Conformity
    Ebook139 pages59 minutes

    Poems of Conformity

    By Charles Williams

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    About this ebook

    Charles Williams was one of the finest -- not to mention one of the most unusual -- theologians of the twentieth century. His mysticism is palpable -- the unseen world interpenetrates ours at every point, and spiritual exchange occurs all the time, unseen and largely unlooked for. His novels are legend, his poetry profound, and as a member of the Inklings, he contributed to the mythopoetic revival in contemporary culture.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn R. Mabry
    Release dateFeb 14, 2017
    ISBN9781944769574
    Poems of Conformity
    Author

    Charles Williams

    Charles Walter Stansby Williams (1886 1945) was a British poet, novelist, playwright, theologian and literary critic. Most of his life was spent in London, where he was born, but in 1939 he moved to Oxford with the university press for which he worked and was buried there following his early death.Charles Williams was born in London in 1886, the only son of (Richard) Walter Stansby Williams (18481929) and Mary (née Wall). His father Walter was a journalist and foreign business correspondent for an importing firm, writing in French and German, who was a 'regular and valued' contributor of verse, stories and articles to many popular magazines. His mother Mary, the sister of the ecclesiologist and historian J. Charles Wall, was a former milliner (hatmaker),[4] of Islington. He had one sister, Edith, born in 1889. The Williams family lived in 'shabby-genteel' circumstances, owing to Walter's increasing blindness and the decline of the firm by which he was employed, in Holloway. In 1894 the family moved to St Albans in Hertfordshire, where Williams lived until his marriage in 1917.

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      Book preview

      Poems of Conformity - Charles Williams

      Proserpina

      NOW our love returns at last,

      For the secret months are spent!

      She hath laid aside her vast

      Majesty of government.

      Mother, now thy child is found!

      O! we can but look aghast:

      Heart and tongue alike our bound.

      Proserpina, O was this,

      This the loveliness we saw

      Or hath royalty in Dis

      Girded thee about with awe?

      Did this grave and fateful voice,

      These they regnant hands of law,

      Ever in our games rejoice?

      Goddess’ child indeed thou art,

      And thy mother now no more

      Presseth thee against her heart

      As at morning heretofore:

      Courtesy she yieldeth, such

      As her sisters, on their part,

      Grant there, without smile or touch.

      ‘Sister’ cried our lips of old;

      ‘Sister’ saith thy mother now,

      While our frighted eyes behold

      Deity upon thy brow.

      Lo we yield thee head and knee

      Was our greeting overbold

      That so often pleasured thee?

      As in Enna’s fields thou wert

      Shalt thou never be again;

      When the trodden flowers’ hurt

      Smote thee with thy heaviest pain.

      Thou hast seen the Eternal Lord

      Measuring unto men desert,

      And they spirit hath adored.

      O for her who with us trod,

      Loving day and sunlight, whom,

      Yielding service to her nod,

      Loved we, ere thy voice as doom

      And thy vision destiny;

      Ere the presence of a god

      Mightily o’ershadowed thee.

      Troy

      I. ANDROMANCHE

      IN Ilion fifty towers are set, whereof

      Hector, that strongest, who is set to be

      A warning and a terror toward the sea,

      Is glad at heart on this day’s dawn for love:

      To whom with music through the temples move

      Feet of a maiden, maiden-circled, she

      Whose name being called of men Andromanche

      Gleams like white Pergamos all peers’ names above.

      Troy many-palaced, single-lorded Troy,

      Virgin like Pallas’ spear to Pallas’ grip,

      Like Aphrodite land-poised from the tide,

      Joyous and crownèd city, this new joy

      By Hector’s hand crowns and by Priam’s lip

      Salutes, and as in bridal hails the bride.

      II. HELEN

      NOT thee alone, Helen, did thy new lord

      Through that long night in thy Greek palace woo,

      But his own native city’s false hands drew

      In thine from law, broke in thy troth her word:

      Wherefore she knows thee now and does accord

      To thee full honour, swears herself anew

      Thine and thy leman’s lover, brings thereto

      Skill of war-chariot, cunning of the sword.

      Ascend upon the walls, Helen, and look,

      Companioned by the young Andromanche,

      Thither where, far beyond Scamander’s brook,

      The lawless, lustful, fierce barbarians dwell:

      Turn thyself then, gaze northward, canst thou tell

      How far off is that line of shore, that sea?

      III. HECUBA

      DIDST thou grow old, Troy, as thy queen grew old,

      Honoured in sons, rich in kings’ amity,

      Lady of households, ill there came to thee

      Argos and Ithaca with commandment cold?

      Whose faces ever now ty dreams behold

      Storm through thy walls with shouts to victory,

      Whom each new morn dreads lest that morn should see

      Such end as thy mad daughter hath foretold.

      Shall Helen comfort theee at all, O queen?

      Or shall her beauty willingly be seen

      For whose old lord’s sake each new fight is won?

      Or her voice break the echo heard in thee

      Of Priam’s feet before thy gate when he

      Bore Hector home, in guard of Thetis’ son?

      IV. CASSANDRA

      QUEEN Hecuba is dead and no more known;

      The slave Andromache by Pyrrhus’ chair

      Waits; only now still by a royal stair

      The feet of Helen mount her royal throne:

      Whose eyes, whose mouth have mocked thy sight, thy moan,

      How oft, Cassandra! since in thy despair

      Were none sure-hearted through Troy’s bounds to share,

      Save some few old men, blind, morose, alone.

      O Troy, whose name was once Andromanche,

      Helen, while wantonly thou didst rejoice,

      Hecuba, ere thou yet hadst ceased to reign,

      What shalt thou be more than a cry of pain

      Hereafter through the nations, than the voice

      Of a prophetess in her adveristy?

      At Dawn

      IT is fallen! it is fallen! Militant

      Hell all the heights of heaven ramparted

      Hath ta’en: the ruin of them goes up in fire.

      Rejoice, O Lucifer! be jubilant,

      Lords of the Pit! ye have what ye desire.

      Your storm hath rent the New Jerusalem

      As a man’s fingers tear his garments hem:

      And whither is the Maker of it fled?

      It is fallen! it is fallen! Michael’s sword

      Is broken and Ithuriel’s spear. Alone

      In that dire rout the high prince Azrael

      Scarce holds the River of Life, and by its ford

      Stays the victorious pursuit of hell.

      The meadows of thre Lamb are no more sweet

      To pasture: they are pressed with burning feet,

      And by hot winds the crystal sea is blown.

      It is fallen! it is fallen! All the stars

      Whisper to one another, and the night

      Escapes in terror from this fearful East.

      Moon upon moon makes sure each gate with bars,

      Sun upon sun. Creation from its least

      World to its mighiest darkens all its towers,

      And leaves its walls unkept

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