A Naked Tree

Love Sonnets to C. S. Lewis and Other Poems

Joy Davidman, Don W. King

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781467442930
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Women in Poetry
• Index: Literature

Displays for the first time the complete work of a neglected poetic genius Although best known as C. S. Lewis's wife, Joy Davidman was a gifted writer herself who produced, among other things, two novels and an award-winning volume of poetry in her short lifetime. The first comprehensive collection of Davidman's poetry, A Naked Tree includes the poems that originally appeared in her Letter to a Comrade (1938), forty other published poems, and more than two hundred previously unpublished poems that came to light in a remarkable 2010 discovery. Of special interest is Davidman's sequence of forty-five love sonnets to C. S. Lewis, which offer stunning evidence of her spiritual struggles with regard to her feelings for Lewis, her sense of God's working in her lonely life, and her mounting frustration with Lewis for keeping her at arm's length emotionally and physically. Readers of these Davidman poems -- arranged chronologically by Don King -- will discover three recurring, overarching themes: God, death, and immortality; politics, including capitalism and communism; and (the most by far) romantic, erotic love. This volume marks Joy Davidman as a figure to be reckoned with in the landscape of twentieth-century American poetry.

Poems 1929-1938

What Spur of Gold Is This That Pricks the Dawn?

What spur of gold is this that pricks the dawn

To further flaming of its fierce desire

Of glory? On the eager winds of morn

Comes blowing down the soul-­devouring fire

That keenly lashes the mad spirit higher

And higher yet; the dry hot fever of fame,

The far bright crown to which all slaves aspire —

Need most imperative, to which the name

Of fondest love shows but a flickering flame.

(January 1929)

Sunset — The Hall of Fame

The river is a quiet flicker of gold;

The dropping sun, over the serrate ridge

Of those tall buildings rising thousand-­fold

Slants by the far pier of a shadowy bridge.

The trolley rattles home its weary crowd;

The parting rays of sunlight softly gild

The sculptured statesman, watching, almost proud,

The splendid city that he helped to build.

Wide eyes carved in bronze quiet, do you see

Towers sky-­climbing from the river-­side,

This legacy from your firm-­molding hand,

This City! — though the murmuring shadow-­sea

Has swept you out on its eternal tide,

Changeless deep eyes, you watch our changing land.

(Summer 1929)

In a Moment of Ecstasy

When I am old beside a sheltered fire,

When dim blue shadow fills my passive years,

I would not look upon the sun-­desire

Of my keen sunlit youth with helpless tears.

Let me forget the passion of my blood,

If this red passion ends despondent gray!

Do rivers’ muddy trickles remember flood,

Proud in hill-­cleaving strength, a gayer day?

To feel the slow slide from precarious stars

Down to the placid, safe, ignoble ground

Were harder than, with no brain-­searing scars

Of scarlet memory, to call age crowned

With wisdom through mere drowsing of the soul,

Forgetting life’s young magic, that life stole.

(Winter 1929-1930)

Endymion: I Had Prayed to t...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Poems 1929-1938
• Letter to a Comrade (1938)
• Poems 1939-1940
• Poems 1941-1952
• Poems to C. S. Lewis (1952-1955)
• Appendix: Poetic Verse Patterns
• Index of Titles
• Index of First Lines