Love, by CS Lewis

Love

Love's as warm as tears, 
          Love is tears: 
Pressure within the brain,
Tension at the throat,
Deluge, weeks of rain,
Haystacks afloat,
Featureless seas between 
Hedges, where once was green 

Love's as fierce as fire, 
         Love is fire: 
All sorts--Infernal heat 
Clinkered with greed and pride, 
Lyric desire, sharp-sweet, 
Laughing, even when denied, 
And that empyreal flame 
Whence all loves came. 

Love's as fresh as spring, 
          Love is spring: 
Bird-song in the air,
Cool smells in a wood,
Whispering "Dare! Dare!" 
To sap, to blood,
Telling "Ease, safety, rest,
Are good; not best." 

Love's as hard as nails, 
          Love is nails: 
Blunt, thick, hammered through 
The medial nerves of One 
Who, having made us, knew 
The thing He had done, 
Seeing (what all that is) 
Our cross, and His.

C.S. Lewis  

Gunboat on the Huangpu

There's a gunboat
    In the roads off the Bund,
Small and grey against
    The dingy yellow clay solution
Swirling down the Huangpu to the  
    East China Sea.
The Peterel's bridge is broken
    Red and orange flowers
Bloom amidships as she settles,
    British steel into Chinese mud
Stricken, sinking under the shells,
    Salvos out of the Rising Sun.

But her flag is not struck,
    And defiance barks and flashes 
Still from her turret most aft.
    Throwing flame, eating fire,
Her gun crew, bound by water and iron
    And will to feed their reeking tubes
Shells, powder, and pull
    Blind, into the morning light
Seeking sightless the mighty Izumo.

Evening of the Day that Will Live in Infamy
    A few are pulled from the silent wreck,
Badly burned, skin sloughing off in the hands
    Of rescuers, the men placed in beds in 
Shanghai General, under white linen temporarily
    While life expires and mad war begins its 
Years long reign.  

The soldiers of the Son of Amaterasu
    Come into the hospital, 
One of the, oh so few times,
    To salute and bow to the blackened faces and broken
Bodies of the several on the threshold of eternity
    As mortally wounded as the hulk off the docks.

All that is honored, where East meets West
    With fear and death, is perseverance.
Sticking to your guns,
    Enduring to the utter end of things.

The mountain roars, fire consumes all,
    The sword eats the stricken and the wielder.

Until the eagles come,
    And the White Rider on wings of silver,
With the secret name,
    We are The Resistance.