After Prayers, Lie Cold

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After Prayers, Lie Cold

by C.S. Lewis

Arise my body, my small body, we have striven
Enough, and He is merciful; we are forgiven.
Arise small body, puppet-like and pale, and go,
White as the bed-clothes into bed, and cold as snow,
Undress with small, cold fingers and put out the light,
And be alone, hush’d mortal, in the sacred night,
-A meadow whipt flat with the rain, a cup
Emptied and clean, a garment washed and folded up,
Faded in colour, thinned almost to raggedness
By dirt and by the washing of that dirtiness.
Be not too quickly warm again. Lie cold; consent
To weariness’ and pardon’s watery element.
Drink up the bitter water, breathe the chilly death;
Soon enough comes the riot of our blood and breath.

________________________

This poem is 14 lines, written with no consistent meter, but a rhyme scheme of seven couplets, AA-BB-CC-DD-EE-FF-GG.

The title of the poem, and the lines that follow, are a series of commands given by the Speaker to his own body. The title also s a command by the Speaker to his own body to lie cold after prayers. In the title, the use of the comma is key to understanding. The Speaker’s body is the thing which must lie cold, not his prayers. The object of the command becomes clear in the lines that follow.

Lines 1 and 2:

Arise my body, my small body, we have striven
Enough, and He is merciful; we are forgiven.

These lines clarify the party being addressed by the Speaker – namely his own body. Line 2’s use of “He” lets us know that the Speaker is a religious man. Lewis the poet is famously Christian, and this faith can be inferred upon the Speaker, as well, from the poem’s descriptions of a God who is merciful and forgiving.

The picture painted in these lines is one wherein the Speaker and his body are not one. He addresses his body as a separate being, when giving it commands, and even refers to himself, as his body, as “we” – if the two are separate entities.

Lines 3 through 6:

Arise small body, puppet-like and pale, and go,
White as the bed-clothes into bed, and cold as snow,
Undress with small, cold fingers and put out the light,
And be alone, hush’d mortal, in the sacred night,

In this section, the Speaker begins to let us know more about the body he is addresses. He describes it as small, puppet-like, pale, white, cold, and alone. The picture this seems to be painting is one of an old man near the end of his life. In fact, the description of the body is that of a thing that is lifeless We see that in particular with his use of “puppet-like” which implies a lack of life and autonomy. We might assume here that Lewis’s Speaker is the puppeteer in this analogy, giving commands throughout the poem.

Note also that the Speaker describes his body as “small” both in Line 1 and Line 3, and he again uses this descriptor, of his fingers, in Line 5. The Reader can view that as a cosmic statements, with the Speaker seeing himself as small compared to the world. However, given the surrounding context, it seems likely that he is describing an *old* body. It is common for the human body to seemingly get smaller when it reaches a great age. He repeats “cold” as a description of the body in lines 4 and 5 and he uses both “pale” and “white” as descriptors in lines 3 and 4.

The Speaker is leading the Reader to imagine a body that is quite frail and near its death by describing it with terms commonly associated with dead bodies.

Lines 7 through 10:

-A meadow whipt flat with the rain, a cup
Emptied and clean, a garment washed and folded up,
Faded in colour, thinned almost to raggedness
By dirt and by the washing of that dirtiness.

The Speaker takes a break from giving commands to his body and here just describes his body, instead. Through three comparisons, he describes his body as a thing that is used up or worn out – continuing both the poem’s theme of a Speaker who is separate from his own body and the theme of a body that is old and near death.

• A meadow whipt flat with rain presents the image of a body that has been eroded by storms
• a cup emptied and clean presents the image of a body that has served its purpose already
• a garment washed and folded up, faded in colour, thenned almost to raggedness by dirt and the washing of that dirtiness presents the body as old clothes which are worn out and need to be given up or replaced. Clothes which are ragged cannot be worn forever – eventually they fall apart entirely.

In this last comparison, the Speaker also alludes to the Christian theme of repentance from sin and the washing clean from sin by forgiveness.

The Speaker seems ready to be rid of his body, though he does express care for it at the same time.

Lines 11 through 14:

Be not too quickly warm again. Lie cold; consent
To weariness’ and pardon’s watery element.
Drink up the bitter water, breathe the chilly death;
Soon enough comes the riot of our blood and breath.

In these lines, the Speaker returns to giving commands. Here he gives permission to his body to die. We see that in Line 11 when he tells his body not to warm itself too quickly under its blankets. Instead, he would like his body to lie cold under those blankets and “breathe the chilly death.” As an entity apart from his own body, the Speaker seems to be encouraging his own body to give up life and “consent” to death.

Interestingly though, the Speaker does not seem to believe his body will heed his commands. In Line 14, the Speaker, seeming almost resigned to another day of an unwanted mortal life, implies that he will soon wake up to mortal life (i.e. “the riot of our blood and breath.”)

I think it is important, when reading this poem, to view this work through the prism of Lewis the poet’s religious beliefs. He views himself as an eternal being and his mortal body as a temporary and imperfect thing that will someday be replaced by an eternal perfect body. As a result, rather than Lewis’s longing for death being a longing for oblivion, his longing for death is a desire to enter his eternal life.