{
 "id": "c-s-lewis/lapprenti-sorcier",
 "title": "L’Apprenti Sorcier",
 "ordinal": "XXII",
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "C. S. Lewis",
 "poet_slug": "c-s-lewis",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Spirits in Bondage",
 "book_slug": "spirits-in-bondage",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 20,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1919,
  "venue": "Spirits in Bondage (1919)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/spiritsinbondage00lewirich",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2003"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/c-s-lewis_poetry",
  "file": "spirits-in-bondage-chapter-22.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2003",
   "https://archive.org/details/spiritsinbondage00lewirich",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/101865124"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 47,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 44,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Suddenly there came to me",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The music of a mighty sea",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That on a bare and iron shore",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thundered with a deeper roar",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than all the tides that leap and run",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With us below the real sun:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because the place was far away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Above, beyond our homely day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Neighbouring close the frozen clime",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where out of all the woods of time,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Amid the frightful seraphim",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The fierce, cold eyes of Godhead gleam,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Revolving hate and misery",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And wars and famines yet to be.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And in my dreams I stood alone",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Upon a shelf of weedy stone,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And saw before my shrinking eyes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The dark, enormous breakers rise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And hover and fall with deafening thunder",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of thwarted foam that echoed under",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The ledge, through many a cavern drear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With hollow sounds of wintry fear.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And through the waters waste and grey,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thick-strown for many a league away,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Out of the toiling sea arose",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Many a face and form of those",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thin, elemental people dear",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who live beyond our heavy sphere.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And all at once from far and near,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They all held out their arms to me,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Crying in their melody,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Leap in! Leap in, and take thy fill",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of all the cosmic good and ill,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be as the Living ones that know",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Enormous joy, enormous woe,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pain beyond thought and fiery bliss:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For all thy study hunted this,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On wings of magic to arise,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And wash from off thy filmed eyes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The cloud of cold mortality,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To find the real life and be",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As are the children of the deep!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Be bold and dare the glorious leap,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or to thy shame, go, slink again",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Back to the narrow ways of men.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So all these mocked me as I stood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Striving to wake because I feared the flood.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}