Infatuation

Body and soul most fit for love can best
Withstand it. I am ill, and cannot rest,
Therefore I'm caught. Disease is amorous, health
At love's door has the pass both in and out.
Want cannot choose but grub with needy snout
In ravenous dreams, let temperence wait on wealth.
Don't think of her tonight... the very strain
Wears the will down; then in she comes by stealth.

How am I made that such a thing can trouble
My fancy for a day? Her brain's a bubble,
Her soul, a traveller's tale. Her every thrust
And trick I understand... the mould so mean,
And she the thousandth copy, comes between
My thoughts and me... unfrank, unfit for trust,
Yet ignorant in her cunning, a blind tool,
When nature bids her, labouring as she must.

Back to my book. Read. Read. Don't think upon her,
Where every thought is hatred and dishonor.
I do not love her, like her, wish her well.
Is it mere lust? But lust can quench his thirst
In any water; rather, at the first,
There was one moment when I could not tell
The thing she surely is. I stood unarmed
That moment, and the stroke that moment fell.

She stood, an image lost as soon as seen,
Like beauty in a vision half-caught between
Two aimless and long-lumbering dreams of night.
The thing I seek for was not anywhere
At any time on earth. That huntress air
And morning freshness was not hers by right.
She spoke, she smiled; put out what seened the flame,
Left me the cold charred sticks, the ashes white.

And from these sprang the dream I dare not chase,
Lest, the long hunt be over, I embrace
My shadow. (Furies wait upon that bed)
It plucks me at the elbow... 'love can reach
That other soul of hers... charity teach
Atrophied powers once more to raise the head,
Sweet charity.' But she can never learn;
And what am I, whose voice should wake the dead?

How could she learn, who never since her birth
Looked out of her desires and saw the earth
Unshadowed by herself. She knows that man
Has whimsies, and will talk, and take concern
With wondering and desires that serve no turn
Of woman. She would ape, (for well she can),
The rapt disciple at her need, till mask
Was needless... And all ends where it began.

Her holiest moods are gaudy desecrations
Of poor half holy things: her exaltations
Are frothed from music, moonlight, wine and dance;
Love is to her a dream of bridal dresses,
Friendship, a tittering hour of girl's caresses,
Virtue, a steady purpose to advance,
Honoured, and safe, by the old well-proven roads,
No loophole left to passion or to chance.

I longed last night to make her know the truth
That none of them has told her. Flushed with youth,
Dazed with a half-hour triumph, she held the crowd.
She loved the boys that buzzed on her like flies,
She loved the envy in the women's eyes,
Faster she talked. I longed to cry aloud,
'What, has no brother told you yet, with whom
With what, you share the power that makes you proud?'

Could she have looked so noble, and no seed
Of spirit in her at all? But mother-greed
Has linked her boy-like splendour to the yoke.
Venus infernal taught such voice and eyes
To bear themselves abroad for merchandise...
Horrible woman-nature, at one stroke
Making the beauty, bending beauty down
To ruthless tasks, before the spirit awoke.

Thank heaven, though I were meshed and made secure,
Its odds, she'd never have me. I am poor...
Thank heave, for if she did, what comes behind!
Can I not see her now, marked with my name,
Among my friends (shame not to hide my shame),
And her glib tongue runs on and rambles blind
Through her slippery paths, revealing and revealing,
While they for my sake cover it and are kind.

Kind? Let them look at home. Which of them all
Knows how his act or word next hour may fall?
Into them, too, this might have come, unbidden,
Unlooked for. For each one of us, down below
The caldron brews in the dark. We do not know
By whom, or on what fields, we are reined and ridden.
There are not acts; spectators of ourselves
We wait and watch the event, the cause is hidden.

All power in man is mummery: good report
A fable: this apparent mind, the sport
For mumbling dynasts old as wind and tide.
Talk, posture, gild it over... still the motion
That moves us is not ours, but in the ocean
Of hunger and bleak fear, like buoys we ride,
And seem to move ourselves, and in the waves
Lifting and falling take our shame and pride.

~C. S. Lewis