Brown, Carol Ann

A version of this essay appears in C. S. Lewis: A Reader's Encyclopedia (1998) published by Zondervan. Only students taking English 401: C. S. Lewis: The Legacy of His Poetic Impulse at Montreat College have permission to use material from the essay.

Notes to Narrative Poems.

In addition to Dymer (discussed elsewhere on this page), this volume contains three other examples of Lewis' narrative poems: "Launcelot" (Hooper dates as early 1930s), "The Nameless Isle" (August 1930), and "The Queen of Drum" (Hooper dates as 1933-34).

"Launcelot" is an unfinished poem set within the context of a Sangrail quest by the knights of Arthur's court. Though Gawain is mentioned early, the poem essentially concerns Launcelot's quest, Guinevere's distress while he is gone and subsequent anger at his delay in coming to her after his return, and the story he tells her about his quest. His adventures include meeting a hermit in a dry, sterile land who tells him the land will not be renewed "until there come / The good knight who will kneel and see, yet not be dumb, / But ask, the Wasted Country shall be still accursed / And the spell upon the Fisher King unreversed, / Who now lies sick and languishing and near to death." After the hermit's unexplained death, Launcelot buries him and rides off on the quest into a rich, fertile country thinking of Guinevere. Eventually he meets the Queen of Castle Mortal who invites him into her chapel where she shows him three stone coffins where "the three best knights of earth shall lie." She reveals she intends to seduce Sir Lamorake, Tristram, and Launcelot and behead them: "For endless love of them I mean to make / Their sweetness mine beyond recovery and to take / That joy away from Morgan and from Guinevere / And Nimue and Isoud and Elaine." Here the poem breaks off. Almost no critical work has been done on this poem other than by Caroline Geer who finds it "an effective dramatic narrative. . . . The story is a dramatization of the quest as the real struggle in men's lives as they search for truth and strive to consecrate themselves to the holy journey" (30).

"The Nameless Isle" reflects Lewis' love of Old English alliterative verse and is a fast-paced story of a shipwrecked mariner and his adventures on a magic isle. While there he encounters a crazed, dwarf-like man from an earlier shipwreck, a Circe-like witch, her estranged magician husband, and their daughter, turned to stone by her father to protect her from both her mother and "The murmuring, mixed, much thwarted stream / Of the flesh, flowing with confused noise, / Perishing perpetually." Though the conflict between husband and wife has effectively disrupted vital life on the island, the mariner's discovery of a magic flute and the dwarf's playing of it produces a magic that leads to a swirling conclusion where husband and wife are reconciled, the daughter is re-awakened to love the mariner, and the latter two are joined by the dwarf in an idyllic voyage back to England. Lewis handles the alliterative verse well and produces one of his finest poems.

"The Queen of Drum" is Lewis' most ambitious poem after Dymer. Though Hooper considers it "Lewis's best poem," John Masefield gets to the heart of the problem with this poem: "I have greatly enjoyed it, and feel an extraordinary beauty in the main theme-the escape of the Queen into Fairyland , . . . [but] at present, I cannot help feeling, that the design is encumbered" (cited in NP, 179). Indeed, while the poem contains beautifully lyrical passages, it fails as a compelling work because of its flawed design. This weakness, characteristic of almost all of his narrative poetry, may be stated simply: In Lewis' narrative poetry he focuses primarily upon prosody, at the expense of plot. In effect, he writes a number of powerfully evocative passages where metrical structures, rhyme, stanza forms, and so forth dazzle while at the same time narrative and plot stumble. In the end we suspect we have read something wonderful, but we are unsure as to how it all fits together. Ironically, this is a problem Lewis solves in this fiction, perhaps because with prose he has less "mechanical" restraints to confine his creative imagination.

The poem, written in five cantos, concerns an old, pompous king whose young wife enjoys wandering at night enjoying the beauty of the evening and visions of the faery world. When the decay of the kingdom is blamed on her by the pious, bigoted Council, particularly a fascist-like General, she defies them, calling them hypocrites since they too wander in the evening and intimating their adventures are sexual in nature: "Five hours ago / Where were you?--and with whom?--how far away?" Embarrassed, the king sends her off to a tower to be counseled by the Archbishop while he and the Chancellor decide to search the dungeon for a man condemned years earlier for espousing views similar to the Queen's. The Queen rejects the Archbishop's counsel that she recant, since "I've met you / When you were also there, is that not true?" Though he cannot recall such meeting, he admits to having dreamed something like what she says, and advises her: "How can it profit us to talk / Much of that region where you say you walk. / We are not native there: we shall not die / Nor live in elfin country, you and I." Instead, he advises her to hold to orthodox belief: "Hence, if you ask me of the way / Yonder, what can I do but say . . . / Go, learn you catechism and creed." She cannot accept this counsel.

Soon they are sent for by the General who has murdered the king and the Chancellor. He asks the Archbishop to head a new state religion, "A Drummian kind of Christianity." When the Archbishop refuses, the General has him beaten to death. He offers to wed and bed the Queen, provided she agree to "no more night wanderings nor no talk of them." She buys time by asking for a chance to consider his proposal, and escapes from her jailor while being led back to the tower. Her escape from her pursuers is chronicled with some beautiful passages describing her flight through meadows and forests, culminating in her having to choose one of three roads: to Heaven, to Hell, or to faeryland. In an obvious allusion to the medieval Thomas Rhymer, she chooses "to glide out of all the world of men, / Nor will she turn to right or left her head, / But go straight on. She has tasted elven bread. / And so, the story tells, she passed away / Out of the world."

Bibliography

Brown, Carol Ann. "Three Roads: A Comment on 'The Queen of Drum.'" Bulletin

of the New York C. S. Lewis Society 7, no. 78 (April 1976): 14.

Christopher, Joe. "C. S. Lewis Dances Among the Elves: A Dull and Scholarly Survey

of Spirits in Bondage and 'The Queen of Drum.'" Mythlore 9 (Spring 1982):

11-17, 47.

Geer, , Richard. "Notes on Narrative Poems." Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis

Society 7, no. 78 (April 1976): 1-14.

Hooper, Walter. "Preface." In C. S. Lewis. Narrative Poems. New York: Harcourt

Brace Jovanovich, 1969.

Kawano, Roland. "C. S. Lewis and 'The Nameless Isle': A Metaphor of Major

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---. "C. S. Lewis' The Queen of Drum." The Lamp-Post of the Southern

California C. S. Lewis Society 11 (November 1987): 10-14.

Purcell, James. "Narrative Poems." Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis

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