Excerpt from: "Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics" by Clive Hamilton [C.S. Lewis]

Published under the pseudonym, Clive Hamilton, Spirits in Bondage was C. S. Lewis' first book. Most of the poems appear to have been written between1915 and 1918, (he would have been between 17 and 20 years old) a period during which Lewis was a student under W. T. Kirkpatrick, a military trainee at Oxford, and a soldier serving in the trenches of World War I. This was a time when Lewis struggled with the difficult issues presented by The Great War, and also his growing cynicism about the existence of God.

Come let us curse our Master ere we die,
For all our hopes in endless ruin lie.
The good is dead. Let us curse God most High.

Four thousand years of toil and hope and thought
Wherein man laboured upward and still wrought
New worlds and better, Thou hast made as naught.

We built us joyful cities, strong and fair,
Knowledge we sought and gathered wisdom rare.
And all this time you laughed upon our care,

And suddenly the earth grew black with wrong,
Our hope was crushed and silenced was our song,
The heaven grew loud with weeping. Thou art strong.

(Second part of the extract later in the week)