Lead us, Evolution, lead us /Up the future's endless stair; /Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us, /For stagnation is despair; /Groping, guessing, yet progressing, /Lead us nobobody knows where.
The erudite Fr Simon Heans has sent me the first stanza of a Sacred Lyric which C S Lewis composed and sent to D L Sayers. Possibly, someone who knows how to do such stuff might care to put all six stanzas onto this blog's thread.
The Humnos seems to be conceptually linked with Lewis's opposition to a particular 'humanist' fad whereby immortality might be sought for the human race by enabling it to mutate through evolutionary means as it spreads through the Universe. Videte the passage near the end of Out of the Silent Planet (1938), where, as instructed by the Ousiarch of Malacandra, Ransom is translating the vapourings of Professor Edward Rolles Weston, FRS.
But this stanza ...
Ask not if it's god or devil, /Brethren, lest your words imply /Static norms of good and evil /(As in Plato) throned on high; /Such scholastic, inelastic, /Abstract yardsticks we deny.
... calls to mind the elastic ethical systems of our own days, in which morality is endlessly mutable. Neatly refuted in Veritatis splendor of S JP2.
Knox could have turned this sort of stuff into Latin elegiacs at the drop a a hat. I can't. Take
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern.
Whatever would that be in metrical Latin?
ReplyDeleteEvolutionary Hymn
Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future’s endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.
Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,
In the present what are they
while there’s always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we’re going,
We can never go astray.
To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,
Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,
Towards that unknown god we yearn.
Ask not if it’s god or devil,
Brethren, lest your words imply
Static norms of good and evil
(As in Plato) throned on high;
Such scholastic, inelastic,
Abstract yardsticks we deny.
Far too long have sages vainly
Glossed great Nature’s simple text;
He who runs can read it plainly,
'Goodness = what comes next.'
By evolving, Life is solving
All the questions we perplexed.
On then! Value means survival–
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present,
Standards, though it may well be).
Lead us, Evolution, lead us
ReplyDeleteUp the future’s endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.
Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,
In the present what are they
while there’s always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we’re going,
We can never go astray.
To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,
Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,
Towards that unknown god we yearn.
Ask not if it’s god or devil,
Brethren, lest your words imply
Static norms of good and evil
(As in Plato) throned on high;
Such scholastic, inelastic,
Abstract yardsticks we deny.
Far too long have sages vainly
Glossed great Nature’s simple text;
He who runs can read it plainly,
'Goodness = what comes next.'
By evolving, Life is solving
All the questions we perplexed.
On then! Value means survival–
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present,
Standards, though it may well be).
"Lead us, Evolution, lead us
ReplyDeleteUp the future’s endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.
Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,
In the present what are they
while there’s always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we’re going,
We can never go astray.
To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,
Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,
Towards that unknown god we yearn.
Ask not if it’s god or devil,
Brethren, lest your words imply
Static norms of good and evil
(As in Plato) throned on high;
Such scholastic, inelastic,
Abstract yardsticks we deny.
Far too long have sages vainly
Glossed great Nature’s simple text;
He who runs can read it plainly,
'Goodness = what comes next.'
By evolving, Life is solving
All the questions we perplexed.
On then! Value means survival–
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present,
Standards, though it may well be)."
(Sung to DRAKE'S BROUGHTON?)
Sung to Mannheim, surely? The first line and the internal rhyme in the fifth of each stanza point to "Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us" as the model.
DeleteBecause of its lively upward movement, it may also be sung to REGENT SQUARE.
ReplyDeleteTune Mannheim, surely?
ReplyDeletePatricius
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern, in my poor Latin -
ReplyDelete"to whatever variation ..." [mutatio]
oculis proptosibus
an clunibus tetragonis
[parce nobis Domine!]
ReplyDelete'Ask not if it’s god or devil,
Brethren, lest your words imply
Static norms of good and evil
(As in Plato) throned on high;
Such scholastic, inelastic,
Abstract yardsticks we deny.'
Lewis anticipated present-day synodality-speak perfectly.
Many thanks to Father and the above contributors for enormously brightening my Monday morning. Could this be a practical example of evolutionary improvement?
ReplyDeleteSuch a great sadness, a loss to the world, that C S Lewis obstinately stuck to Anglicanism to the end. There can be little doubt that a cause for canonisation would be proposed had he converted. Such richness - a man whose writings are sought out daily by ordinary men and women for their accessible theology. And occasional humour, another mark of sanctity.
ReplyDeleteYes, Mannheim 'Altered from Chorale by F. Flitz (1804-76)', 426 in the good old EH wherein there is no trace of Drake's Broughton which appears to have been written by Elgar and which surely has a different metre.
ReplyDeleteCertainly Lewis' opening line suggests "Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us". But there may also be an allusion to the 15th-century hymn, "Ierusalem luminosa", translated by JM Neale as "Light's abode, celestial Salem". Both EH and A&M have excerpted six stanzas from that much longer hymn for All Saints Day.
ReplyDeleteLike Lewis' Sacred Lyric, the Latin of "Light's Abode, celestial Salem" has six stanzas, in the same metre, and one or two instances of internal rhyme in the fifth line. Two stanzas pile on the adjectives to describe what the future body will be like:
In te durat longitudo
Sempiterni temporis,
Quæ plena beatitudo
Reformati corporis,
In hac par similitude
Redemptis et angelis.
O quam vere gloriosum
Eris corpus fragile,
Cum fueris tam formosum,
Forte, sanum, agile,
Liberum, voluptuosum,
In ævum durabile.
Wouldn't Beethoven's Hymn To Joy be a suitable tune?
ReplyDeleteThat's 8 lines of tune for 6 lines of words per verse.
Delete