A Speaker's Prayer

From all my lame defeats and oh! much more,
From all the victories that I seemed to score;
From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf,
At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of Thy divinity,
Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead
Of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.
From all my thoughts, even from thoughts of Thee,
O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye,
Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.

(a prayer and poem of C.S. Lewis, from his Poems, ed. Walter Hooper (San Diego: Harcourt, 1992), p. 129)