“You can’t get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” C. S. Lewis to Walter Hooper—reported in Hooper’s preface to the Lewis collection Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966), v.
Such a tapestry his mind could weave;
He gave us Puddleglum and Reepicheep!
Yet there were two things he could not conceive:
A book too long, a pot of tea too deep.
He plumbed the deepest caves of human thought;
He climbed the peaks of poetry and song,
Yet never could he find that God had wrought
A cup of tea too large, a book too long.
Each day would dawn to the same set of plans:
Chapel, breakfast, and then what comes next?
The endless quest to satisfy the man’s
Voracious appetite for tea and text.
He gave his time, his energy, his love
To pupils, letters, books, and family,
To friends, chores, God—and the fulfillment of
His endless appetite for text and tea.
Donald T. Williams is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College and a past president of the International Society of Christian Apologetics. A border dweller, he stays permanently camped out on the borders between serious scholarship and pastoral ministry, theology and literature, Narnia and Middle-Earth. He is the author of fourteen books, including
the forthcoming Answers from Aslan: The Winsome Apologetics of C. S. Lewis (Tampa: DeWard, 2023).
Subscribe
This work is part of Celebrating Planet Narnia (Advent 2018). The issue is available in both print and digital format (Kindle, Nook, and epub.)
You can purchase your own copy of this edition at your favorite online retailer, or subscribe to An Unexpected Journal and save.
Click to Subscribe
Citation Information
Donald T. Williams. “C.S. Lewis: A Life.” An Unexpected Journal 1, no. 4. (Advent 2018): 57.
Direct Link: https://anunexpectedjournal.com/c-s-lewis-a-life/
Credits:
This new poem is scheduled to appear in the second edition of Stars Through the Clouds: The Collected Poetry of Donald T. Williams (Lynchburg: Lantern Hollow Press, 2018), currently in preparation. It is used here by permission.
