{
 "id": "c-s-lewis/the-philosopher",
 "title": "The Philosopher",
 "ordinal": "XVI",
 "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": 14,
 "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": {
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  "repo": "standardebooks/c-s-lewis_poetry",
  "file": "spirits-in-bondage-chapter-16.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": 51,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 59,
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  [
   {
    "text": "Who shall be our prophet then,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Chosen from all the sons of men",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To lead his fellows on the way",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of hidden knowledge, delving deep",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To nameless mysteries that keep",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their secret form the solar day!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or who shall pierce with surer eye!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This shifting veil of bittersweet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And find the real things that lie",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Beyond this turmoil, which we greet",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With such a wasted wealth of tears?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who shall cross over for us the bridge of fears",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And pass in to the country where the ancient Mothers dwell?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is it an elder, bent and hoar",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who, where the waste Atlantic swell",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Oh lonely beaches makes its roar,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In his solitary tower",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through the long night hour by hour",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pores on old books with watery eye",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When all his youth has passed him by,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And folly is schooled and love is dead",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And frozen fancy laid abed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While in his veins the gradual blood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Slackens to a marish flood?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For he rejoiceth not in the ocean’s might,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Neither the sun giveth delight,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor the moon by night",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Shall call his feet to wander in the haunted forest lawn.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He shall no more rise suddenly in the dawn",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When mists are white and the dew lies pearly",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Cold and cold on every meadow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To take his joy of the season early,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The opening flower and the westward shadow,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And scarcely can he dream of laughter and love,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They lie so many leaden years behind.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Such eyes are dim and blind,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the sad, aching head that nods above",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His monstrous books can never know",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The secret we would find.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But let our seer be young and kind",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And fresh and beautiful of show,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And taken ere the lustyhead",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And rapture of his youth be dead;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ere the gnawing, peasant reason",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "School him over-deep in treason",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To the ancient high estate",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of his fancy’s principate,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That he may live a perfect whole,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A mask of the eternal soul,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And cross at last the shadowy bar",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To where the ever-living are.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}