I've been a fan of C.S. Lewis since I was young. Here are a couple short "odds and ends" he wrote that I hadn't seen until recently. First, a poem, with a humorous twist:
The Late Passenger
by C.S. Lewis
The sky was low, the sounding rain was falling dense and dark,
And Noah's sons were standing at the window of the Ark.
The beasts were in, but Japhet said, 'I see one creature more
Belated and unmated there come knocking at the door.'
'Well let him knock,' said Ham, 'Or let him drown or learn to swim.
We're overcrowded as it is; we've got no room for him.'
'And yet it knocks, how terribly it knocks,' said Shem, 'Its feet
Are hard as horn--but oh the air that comes from it is sweet.'
'Now hush,' said Ham, 'You'll waken Dad, and once he comes to see
What's at the door, it's sure to mean more work for you and me.'
Noah's voice came roaring from the darkness down below,
'Some animal is knocking. Take it in before we go.'
Ham shouted back, and savagely he nudged the other two,
'That's only Japhet knocking down a brad-nail in his shoe.'
Said Noah, 'Boys, I hear a noise that's like a horse's hoof.'
Said Ham, 'Why, that's the dreadful rain that drums upon the roof.'
Noah tumbled up on deck and out he put his head;
His face went grey, his knees were loosed, he tore his beard and said,
'Look, look! It would not wait. It turns away. It takes its flight.
Fine work you've made of it, my sons, between you all to-night!
'Even if I could outrun it now, it would not turn again
--Not now. Our great discourtesy has earned its high disdain.
'Oh noble and unmated beast, my sons were all unkind;
In such a night what stable and what manger will you find?
'Oh golden hoofs, oh cataracts of mane, oh nostrils wide
With indignation! Oh the neck wave-arched, the lovely pride!
'Oh long shall be the furrows ploughed across the hearts of men
Before it comes to stable and to manger once again,
'And dark and crooked all the ways in which our race shall walk,
And shrivelled all their manhood like a flower with broken stalk,
'And all the world, oh Ham, may curse the hour when you were born;
Because of you the Ark must sail without the Unicorn.’
-C.S. Lewis, ‘Poems’, 1963. A version titled “The Sailing of the Ark” was first published on August 11, 1948 in Punch.
Times Literary Supplement (October 2, 1937)
A WORLD FOR CHILDREN
THE HOBBIT or There and Back Again. By J. R. R. TOLKIEN. Allen and Unwin. 7s. 6d.
To define the world of "The Hobbit" is, of course, impossible, because it is new. You cannot anticipate it before you go there, as you cannot forget it once you have gone. The author’s admirable illustrations and maps of Mirkwood and Goblingate and Esgaroth give one an inkling—and so do the names of the dwarf and dragon that catch our eyes as we first ruffle the pages. But there are dwarfs and dwarfs, and no common recipe for children’s stories will give you creatures so rooted in their own soil and history as those of Professor Tolkien—who obviously knows much more about them than he needs for this tale. Still less will the common recipe prepare us for the curious shift from the matter-of-fact beginnings of his story (“hobbits are small people, smaller than dwarfs—and they have no beards—but very much larger than Lilliputians”) to the saga-like tone of the later chapters (“It is in my mind to ask what share of their inheritance you would have paid to our kindred had you found the hoard unguarded”). You must read for yourself to find out how inevitable the change is and how it keeps pace with the hero’s journey. Though all is marvellous, nothing is arbitrary: all the inhabitants of Wilderland seem to have the same unquestionable right to their existence as those of our own world, though the fortunate child who meets them will have no notion—and his unlearned elders not much more—of the deep sources in our blood and tradition from which they spring.
For it must be understood that this is a children’s book only in the sense that the first of many readings can be undertaken in the nursery. "Alice" is read gravely by children and with laughter by grown-ups; "The Hobbit", on the other hand, will be funnier to its youngest readers, and only years later, at a tenth or a twentieth reading, will they begin to realise what deft scholarship and profound reflection have gone to make everything in it so ripe, so friendly, and in its own way so true. Prediction is dangerous: but "The Hobbit" may well prove a classic.
The London Times (October 8, 1937)
PROFESSOR TOLKIEN'S "HOBBIT"
All who love that kind of children's book which can be read and re-read by adults should take note that a new star has appeared in this constellation. If you like the adventures of Ratty and Mole you will like The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien (Allen and Unwin, 7s. 6d.). If, in those adventures, you prized the solidity of the social and geographical context in which your small friends moved, you will like "The Hobbit" even better. The hobbit himself, Mr. Bilbo Baggins, is as prosaic as Mole, but fate sets him wandering among dwarfs and elves, over goblin mountains, in search of dragon-guarded gold. Every one he meets can be enjoyed in the nursery; but to the trained eye some characters will seem almost mythopoeic - notably lugubrious gollum the fish-man, and the ferociously benevolent Beorn, half man, half bear, in his garden buzzing with bees.
The truth is that in this book a number of good things, never before united, have come together: a fund of humour, an understanding of children, and a happy fusion of the scholar's with the poet's grasp of mythology. On the edge of a valley one of Professor Tolkien's characters can pause and say: "It smells like elves." It may be years before we produce another author with such a nose for an elf. The Professor has the air of inventing nothing. He has studied trolls and dragons at first hand and describes them with that fidelity, which is worth oceans of glib "originality." The maps (with runes) are excellent, and will be found thoroughly reliable by young travelers in the same region.
The truth is that in this book a number of good things, never before united, have come together: a fund of humour, an understanding of children, and a happy fusion of the scholar's with the poet's grasp of mythology. On the edge of a valley one of Professor Tolkien's characters can pause and say: "It smells like elves." It may be years before we produce another author with such a nose for an elf. The Professor has the air of inventing nothing. He has studied trolls and dragons at first hand and describes them with that fidelity, which is worth oceans of glib "originality." The maps (with runes) are excellent, and will be found thoroughly reliable by young travelers in the same region.
