Suddenly there came to me <br />The music of a mighty sea <br />That on a bare and iron shore <br />Thundered with a deeper roar <br />Than all the tides that leap and run <br />With us below the real sun: <br />Because the place was far away, <br />Above, beyond our homely day, <br />Neighbouring close the frozen clime <br />Where out of all the woods of time, <br />Amid the frightful seraphim <br />The fierce, cold eyes of Godhead gleam, <br />Revolving hate and misery <br />And wars and famines yet to be. <br />And in my dreams I stood alone <br />Upon a shelf of weedy stone, <br />And saw before my shrinking eyes <br />The dark, enormous breakers rise, <br />And hover and fall with deafening thunder <br />Of thwarted foam that echoed under <br />The ledge, through many a cavern drear, <br />With hollow sounds of wintry fear. <br />And through the waters waste and grey, <br />Thick-strown for many a league away, <br />Out of the toiling sea arose <br />Many a face and form of those <br />Thin, elemental people dear <br />Who live beyond our heavy sphere. <br />And all at once from far and near, <br />They all held out their arms to me, <br />Crying in their melody, <br />“Leap in! Leap in and take thy fill <br />Of all the cosmic good and ill, <br />Be as the Living ones that know <br />Enormous joy, enormous woe, <br />Pain beyond thought and fiery bliss: <br />For all thy study hunted this, <br />On wings of magic to arise, <br />And wash from off thy filmed eyes <br />The cloud of cold mortality, <br />To find the real life and be <br />As are the children of the deep! <br />Be bold and dare the glorious leap, <br />Or to thy shame, go, slink again <br />Back to the narrow ways of men.” <br />So all these mocked me as I stood <br />Striving to wake because I feared the flood.<br /><br />Clive Staples Lewis<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/l-apprenti-sorcier/
