save that the night grows darker yet

[incandescens]

Does anyone else remember reading this?

Come in by the golden gates or not at all,
Take of my fruit for others or forbear,
For those who steal and those who climb my wall
Shall find their heart's desire and find despair.

I've finished the chapter, April. It's up -- usual place, etc. ;)

---

Madeleine turned around to look at the pillar of light at the centre of the paving again. It was an apple tree now, still young and thriving, not yet bowed by age or battered down by decades of winters. Fruit hung on it like miniature suns, red and gold and glowing, set among the green leaves like stars, with the pale apple blossom on the branches like the trail of the Milky Way. A golden serpent was coiled around the base of the trunk, seemingly asleep, its long patterned body draped over the roots in a spill of sunlight.

Comments

[diony.livejournal.com]

The poem - it sounds quite familiar but I can't place it.

[incandescens]

It's from CS Lewis' _The Magician's Nephew_, chronologically the first in the Narnia series. The young hero sees it over the gates leading into the orchard where the tree (of life?) grows. Another character does come over the wall and steal an apple for herself, and she becomes the character later known as the White Witch.

[diony.livejournal.com]

And you know, on reading it that was my gut reaction, and then I said to myself 'But that's much too poetic for a Narnia book' -- a reaction which is _sheer_ nonsense, since Lewis was a poet before anything else. Foolish me.

I ought to reread those books. I loved them so much as a kid, and I read lots of other of Lewis's work last year (essays and the like) and really enjoyed it.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Reading that reminds me to go start reading the Narnia series again; it's been far too long. I ought to read Til We Have Faces again, at that, as I'm probably old enough now to appreciate the poetic in it that I couldn't before, being too young to look for more than a good story. Though he does do good stories, at that.

[stormyangel.livejournal.com]

Who is that by? I have never heard of it before.

[incandescens]

It's also by CS Lewis, a book-length version of the Psyche story from Greek myth.