Human

The Thomas Howard essay referred to in the last post was "The Life and Legacy of C.S. Lewis" (1998). It's a good short appreciation of Lewis's life and work and is included in The Night is Far Spent. Thomas liked CSL's poetry and mentioned "On Being Human" which I found in Poems (1964).

ON BEING HUMAN

Angelic minds, they say, by simple intelligence Behold the Forms of nature. They discern Unerringly the Archtypes, all the verities Which mortals lack or indirectly learn. Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying, Pure Earthness and right Stonehood from their clear, High eminence are seen; unveiled, the seminal            Huge Principles appear.

The Tree-ness of the tree they know—the meaning of Arboreal life, how from earth's salty lap The solar beam uplifts it, all the holiness Enacted by leaves' fall and rising sap; But never an angel knows the knife-edged severance Of sun from shadow where the trees begin, The blessed cool at every pore caressing us           —An angel has no skin.

They see the Form of Air; but mortals breathing it Drink the whole summer down into the breast. The lavish pinks, the field new-mown, the ravishing Sea-smells, the wood-fire smoke that whispers Rest. The tremor on the rippled pool of memory That from each smell in widening circles goes, The pleasure and the pang—can angels measure it?            An angel has no nose.

The nourishing of life, and how it flourishes On death, and why, they utterly know; but not The hill-born, earthy spring, the dark cold bilberries The ripe peach from the southern wall still hot, Full-bellied tankards foamy-topped, the delicate Half-lyric lamb, a new loaf's billowy curves, Nor porridge, nor the tingling taste of oranges            An angel has no nerves.

Far richer they! I know the senses' witchery Guards us, like air, from heavens too big to see; Imminent death to man that barb'd sublimity And dazzling edge of beauty unsheathed would be. Yet here, within this tiny, charm'd interior, This parlour of the brain, their Maker shares With living men some secrets in a privacy            Forever ours, not theirs.

Angels have never been human, but "We believe...in one Lord Jesus Christ....by whom all things were made. Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man...." — human.