I’m not sure if this is a right type of question for this community.
The context is not essential, but in a recent video Alex O’Connor quoted “The Apologist’s Evening Prayer” by C.S.Lewis. As a non-native English speaker, I failed to understand it from hearing, so I looked it up but I still struggle with interpreting it.
Can someone here help me out with “translating” to a bit simpler English?
So here’s the poem, as taken from cslewis.com:
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 my 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.
Disclaimer: I’m aware that with poetry, interpretation can be problematic, but here’s my thought process: when I tried to look for “explanation” I haven’t found any, which hints to me that the text is not particularly ambiguous once you can see through the poetry part. (In other words, people who quote this don’t feel the need to add explanation since the meaning is rather clear for an educated native reader.)
So there’s a lot going on here but the message is very simple. Even for a native English speaker, this is some flowery language. Very heavily Christian (all the Thee’s and Thy’s and Thou’s are of course God with that Capital G) and it tries to instill humility before God.
All of this is a fancy way of saying “no matter how much I learn and achieve in life, I must never think I’ve learned or achieved more than God.”