Dreams of Phantom Worlds

The below is an excerpt from C.S. Lewis’s The Queen of Drum, found in Narrative Poems. The excerpt is followed by a reflection from Joshua Luke Smith, poet, Substack writer (find him here), and author of This is the Main Event.

“‘We know not—we remember that we knew.’

And then he paused, and ruefully he smiled

Fondling his knee with thoughtful hand; and, ‘Child,’

He said, ‘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.

Greatly I fear lest, wilfully refusing

Beauty at hand, you walk dark roads to find it,

Impatient of dear earth because behind it

You dream of phantom worlds, forever losing

What is more wonderful—too strange indeed

For you—too dry a flavour for the greed

Of uncorrected palates; this sweet form

Of day and night, the stillness and the storm,

Children, the changing year, the growing god

That springs, by labour, out of the turn’d sod.’

‘I have no child,’ she said, ‘What mockery is this,

What jailor’s pittance offered in the prison of earth,

To that unbounded appetite for larger bliss

Not born with me, but older than my mortal birth? . . .

When shall I be at home? When shall I find my rest?

My lord, you have lived happy and with cause have blessed

This world’s habitual highway, where you walk at ease;

I walk not, but go naked upon bleeding knees.’”1

This is an exchange of stunning honesty. Neither the voice of the Archbishop nor the Queen becomes a caricature; instead, both express sincere responses to the question that has pulsated through every generation: What do we do with our longing? The Archbishop fears that the Queen has become so captivated by the world within her dreams that she can no longer see the gifts hidden within this one. See how he names the most ordinary things: day turning to night, the changing seasons, the stillness and the storms, children, and honest labor. None of them are glamorous, yet all of them are holy. He urges that, in her “dream of phantom worlds,” she is “forever losing / What is more wonderful.” His warning is not against the pursuit of beauty and transcendence, but against overlooking the “beauty at hand” while endlessly and restlessly searching for something beyond it.

The Queen’s reply is equally compelling. “What jailor’s pittance . . .” she asks. Earth, as wonderful as it is, simply cannot satisfy the depth and breadth of the desire she carries.

Here Lewis gives her one of the poem’s most arresting lines: Her longing for “larger bliss” is “older than my mortal birth.” My goodness. She is not describing some fleeting ambition or dissatisfaction, but naming a deep intuition that we were made for more than this world can offer.

The genius of Lewis’s writing lies in refusing to let either voice silence the other. We need the wisdom of the Archbishop in his provocation to pay attention, to “listen to our lives and see them for the fathomless mystery that they are,”2 as Frederick Buechner put it, while embracing the Queen’s refusal to settle—to pursue a land that, far from being phantom, is in many ways more real than the one we inhabit. We are called to live within the tension of this conversation, as those not destined to escape the world, while remaining unconvinced that it will ever be enough.

I’ve lived with this passage for some time now, and I find myself wondering how I might respond to the Queen’s piercing question: “When shall I find my rest?” Perhaps when longing itself becomes a mercy—a holy prodding that prevents us from sleepwalking through our lives. Perhaps when it awakens in us the desire to inhabit the here and now more fully, recognizing that its beauty and goodness are but the foretaste of that far country where we so long to be.

Enjoy the following excerpt from This is the Main Event, Joshua’s latest book that offers a roadmap on how every moment can become meaningful when we recognize the God who meets us in it.

This is the Main Event Sneak Peak