It is well that there are palaces of peace <br />And discipline and dreaming and desire, <br />Lest we forget our heritage and cease <br />The Spirit’s work—to hunger and aspire: <br /> <br />Lest we forget that we were born divine, <br />Now tangled in red battle’s animal net, <br />Murder the work and lust the anodyne, <br />Pains of the beast ‘gainst bestial solace set. <br /> <br />But this shall never be: to us remains <br />One city that has nothing of the beast, <br />That was not built for gross, material gains, <br />Sharp, wolfish power or empire’s glutted feast. <br /> <br />We are not wholly brute. To us remains <br />A clean, sweet city lulled by ancient streams, <br />A place of visions and of loosening chains, <br />A refuge of the elect, a tower of dreams. <br /> <br />She was not builded out of common stone <br />But out of all men’s yearning and all prayer <br />That she might live, eternally our own, <br />The Spirit’s stronghold—barred against despair.<br /><br />Clive Staples Lewis<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/oxford-4/
