Among the hills a meteorite
Lies huge; and moss has overgrown,
And wind and rain with touches light
Made soft, the contours of the stone.
Thus easily can Earth digest
A cinder of sidereal fire,
And make her translunary guest
The native of an English shire.
Nor is it strange these wanderers
Find in her lap their fitting place,
For every particle that's hers
Came at the first from outer space.
All that is Earth has once been sky;
Down from the sun of old she came,
Or from some star that travelled by
Too close to his entangling flame.
Hence, if belated drops yet fall
From heaven, on these her plastic power
Still works as once it worked on all
The glad rush of the golden shower.
I am surprised that no one has made any comments about this poem. It is one of the finest I have read in 50 years. Still, he does beg the question of paganism vs xtainity!
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
For Lewis, paganism was his precursor to Christianity, and even after becoming a Christian he preferred an honest paganism to a shallow Christianity, as evidenced in his poem 'A Cliche Came Out of Its Cage.' Christianity was for Lewis the fulfillment of all the 'sehnsucht' of the pagan myths, the one place, actually, where 'myth became fact.'