Love’s as warm as tears

Love’s as warm as tears,
Love is tears:
Pressure within the brain,
Tension at the throat,
Deluge, weeks of rain,
Haystacks afloat,
Featureless seas between
Hedges, where once was green

Love’s as fierce as fire, 

Love is fire:
All sorts–Infernal heat
Clinkered with greed and pride, 

Lyric desire, sharp-sweet,
Laughing, even when denied, 

And that empyreal flame 

Whence all loves came. 
 

Love’s as fresh as spring,
Love is spring:
Bird-song in the air,
Cool smells in a wood,
Whispering “Dare! Dare!”
To sap, to blood,
Telling “Ease, safety, rest,
Are good; not best.” 

Love’s as hard as nails,
Love is nails: 

Blunt, thick, hammered through 

The medial nerves of One 

Who, having made us, knew 

The thing He had done,
Seeing (what all that is)
Our cross, and His. 


C. S. Lewis, Poems (1964).

Image: Glam