By Erin Ross

“Love’s As Warm As Tears” 

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

C.S. Lewis’s “Love’s As Warm As Tears,” will always hold a special place in my heart. In the spring of my sophomore year of college I went on a wilderness trek to Joshua Tree National Park and the Grand Canyon with Ohio Wesleyan University’s Chaplain’s Office. While on that trip, my perception of identity underwent a dramatic shift as I came to recognize what is and is not important in life. It was small moments spent sitting under the stars, hiking through the mountains, and sharing a book of poems in a little, orange tent that proved to have a great impact on my view of life. As I read “Love’s As Warm As Tears” for the first time, despite sitting outside with hand warmers shoved in my socks and snow crunching under the weight of my body, I felt a warmth I had never experienced before.

In “Love’s As Warm As Tears” C.S. Lewis discusses love as a series of similes and metaphors. The poet compares love to tears, fire, spring, and nails to exemplify various aspects of love and the feelings it brings people. Within each comparison, Lewis likens love to qualities of such elements, such as the brain and throat for tears, heat and flame for fire, air and birds for spring, and nerves and a cross for nails. Although the poem has no obvious plot, it does consist of a type of storytelling in which the speaker explains qualities of love to the reader and uses similes and metaphors to answer an implicit question: what is love? Lewis’s poem is part of a devotional book titled Preparing for Easter. Therefore, it is also important to recognize the way in which the poet’s discussion of love connects to and is a symbol of the love and sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. “Love’s As Warm As Tears,” essentially, is meant to challenge Christians to recognize God as love in all its forms.  

That considered, I believe the main theme of “Love’s As Warm As Tears” is the idea that “God is love,” as it is written in 1 John 4:8 of the Christian Bible  (NIV, 1 John 4. 8). The poem grapples with the idea of love being complex and confusing. With such a variety of experiences, the Christian poet aims to challenge readers to identify God as the ultimate form of love. So, by presenting the theme of “God is love,” the poet challenges readers to view love in a new light, filled with thankfulness and understanding of Jesus’ great sacrifice on the cross. 

In connection to the theme of “God is love,” Lewis uses the entirety of the poem to solidify love as a symbol for the Lord. Such a comparison becomes most evident, as previously noted, when the poet equates love to nails and hints to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This reference becomes even more obvious when he mentions such nails being hammered through the nerves of the one who made us (k)new (Lewis 32). Essentially, the symbolism within the poem takes on a tentacular structure as each stanza serves as a separate “tentacle” or facet of love as a symbol for God. By making such a connection and using love as a symbol for God, each concept or object that is likened to love is, in turn, also likened to God. So, through the use of symbolism and in an attempt to present the theme of “God is love,” Lewis compares God to tears, fire, spring, and nails in his poem “Love’s As Warm As Tears.”

After reading through the poem once and establishing love as a symbol for God, readers can then better understand the role of the poem’s figurative language. To best exemplify the theme of “God is love” and to address the central questions of: What is love? and What is it like to experience love?, C.S. Lewis utilizes a variety of similes and metaphors. The poet begins each stanza with a simile followed directly by a metaphor. Both the similes and metaphors serve to compare love to the same exact things, yet are juxtaposed to challenge the idea of what it is like for something to be, rather than simply be like, something else. The simile-to metaphor structure allows for the presented metaphors to, in a way, correct or edit the understanding provided by the similes. However, one must analyze both to grasp a true understanding of the poet’s intentions. The similes that Lewis first presents are that love is as warm as tears, as fierce as fire, as fresh as spring, and as hard as nails (Lewis 31-32). Such similes present the idea that love, and simultaneously God, takes on similar qualities as tears, fire, spring and nails. So, by using similes, the poet likens the feelings of love, specifically the love of Christ, to the warmth felt by tears, the fierceness displayed by fire, the freshness experienced in spring, and the hardness displayed by nails. By setting up such comparisons as similes, Lewis allows readers to make a connection between the feelings they experience from God with the variety of feelings or qualities that are experienced with tears, fire, spring, and nails. Because these are things with which most readers are intimately familiar, these similes create a connection for readers to make sense of the feelings experienced through God’s love. 

After using similes to discuss love, Lewis immediately transitions to a presentation of metaphors to better tackle the questions of what it means for God to be love, what love is, and what it is like to experience God’s love. It can be inferred that Lewis was not satisfied with God simply being like tears, fire, spring, and nails, so the poet, in a sense, changed his mind to equate God to such things. Essentially, the poet uses a variety of smaller metaphors to exemplify the overarching metaphor of “God is love.” By introducing such conceptual metaphors, readers are able to recognize the way in which the love of God takes on the form of tears, fire, spring, and nails in everyday life and vice versa. For example, the metaphor of love, or symbolically God, being tears is explained by the feeling of tears welling up, causing pressure in the brain or temples and tension at the throat (Lewis 31). In historical and contemporary Christian culture, the response to God’s unconditional love and grace can often be confusion, unbelief, and conviction regarding one’s own sin. Such a feeling of conviction serves as a potential cause of tears and repentance, thus the metaphor of God’s love being tears is presented as tears of repentance. This, in turn, revises the idea that God simply provides a feeling of warmth comparable to tears. Instead, God, who created all things to reflect him, is, in a way, the tears themselves. 

The second metaphor, love is fire, is explained by the heat that is felt with the characteristics of greed and pride, which are often connected to individuals who are far from God or struggling to run from the comfort of sin (Lewis 31). In today’s culture, the promotion of doing what is best for oneself can cause greed, pride and selfishness to encompass itself in a variety of ways, some of which are nearly unrecognizable. However, throughout the bible, God consistently reminds Christians of the necessity to put the desires of the Lord before their own. Therefore, His love possesses a sort of fierceness that can be likened to fire. Such a comparison also suggests the idea that God, despite being love and desiring for us to join him in heaven, sends unbelievers to hell or eternal fire. This suggestion then relies on the metaphor of fire is anger, which is evident in the concepts of a fiery person being short-tempered, or someone who is angry burning with rage. Similar to the previous simile-to-metaphor presentation, such a metaphor emphasizes the idea that God is not only comparable to the power of fire, but actually is all things powerful and fierce. 

Similarly, the metaphor love is spring is central to the concept of God making us new, washing us clean from sin, and making our burdens light. Such a comparison relies on the conceptual metaphor of spring is new and life-bearing. Since the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is the act in which God conquered sin, occurred in the spring, the metaphor becomes even more evident. Such a suggestion revamps the prior simile of God being like the freshness of spring to actually being the person, Jesus, who offers new life. Such a comparison to God’s love being spring, both of which bring forth new life, directly connects to the final metaphor of love being nails. In the final stanza, the poet describes love as being the action of nails hammered through the nerves of the one who made us (Lewis 32). This metaphor most evidently likens God’s love to nails as Lewis explains the sacrifice of the life of Jesus Christ as the ultimate symbol of love. The Lord, like nails, is hard and solid in His promises and sent Christ, who lived a perfect life, to die for us and wash us of all our iniquities. Essentially, the metaphor suggests that the epitome of God as love is shown in Jesus’ sacrifice. This revises the previous simile of God simply being like nails to actually being the nails that made us new.

In recognizing how such metaphors support the theme of God being love, it is also important to note that such metaphors are reliant on lived experience. This is recognized by authors George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their book “Metaphors We Live By,” in which they state “the role of experiential basis is important in understanding the workings of metaphors that do not fit together because they are based on different kinds of experience,” (Lakoff & Johnson, 20). For example, one person may have experienced God’s love, or a perception of his love from a specific church, as scary and overwhelming, and may then liken it to tears or fire. Differently, someone who has experienced life change in becoming a believer would most likely liken God’s love to spring or nails. Such experiences may also represent different stages in a Christian’s faith as he or she grows to know the Lord better. Therefore, each individuals’ experience with the love of God may cause him or her to view love more as tears, fire, spring, or nails.

In analyzing the poem’s content, it is also important to analyze its form and recognize the relationship between the two. First, based on the idea of love being a symbol for God, each stanza serves to represent a different quality of God’s love: warm, fierce, fresh, and hard. By formulating each stanza equally, including a consistent rhyme scheme of A,A,B,C,B,C,D,D, the form of the poem suggests that each of the attributes of God’s love are equally important. Additionally, the fact that the number of rhymes in each stanza correspond to the number of stanzas in the poem suggests the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm, which is utilized by Lewis in his book “The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature.” In the book, Lewis writes that man is a microcosm because “every mode of being in the whole universe contributes to him; he is a cross-section of being,” (Lewis, 153). Essentially, Lewis argues that man reflects the earth and all of existence and vice versa. So, if the structure of the poem “Love’s As Warm As Tears,” suggests such a relationship, it may be argued that tears, fire, spring, and nails are microcosms that reflect God, and, in turn, that God, the macrocosm, reflects the qualities of such microcosms: warmth, fierceness, freshness, and hardness. That being said, I also argue that such a structure, along with the simile-to-metaphor juxtaposition, suggests that no object or form of figurative language is truly adequate enough to define God. Since God is the creator of all things, including love, He is the one who defines all things. Thus, both similes and metaphors prove inadequate to describe Him. Instead, the poet’s structure helps readers to recognize that God, being love, is the one who defines love and all its qualities; thus, no comparison could ever truly explain Him. 

The central theme in “Love’s As Warm As Tears,” of “God is love” can obviously be applied to a larger discussion of religion and the love of Christ. The poem is concerned with depicting God’s love in all of it’s forms as a way to bring readers clarity and comfort in the, often unbelievable and scary, idea of Him providing us undeserving grace. Although indescribable and often overwhelming to dive into, understanding the love of God and the ways in which He has shown such love were integral to my formation of identity and realization of my own worth. Christianity, which is now central to my identity, changed the way I viewed myself and the world around me. Therefore, Lewis’s poem and its introduction of the gospel as the heart of Christianity, undoubtedly connects to the topic of religion and the search for self. 

In reading and analyzing Lewis’s poem, individuals may have the opportunity to learn more about the various qualities of God’s love, the actions in which He displayed his love for us, such as the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, and the ways in which such a love can make us new. At the least, an individual may gain a new perception of what love is and can be. Altogether, any individual may benefit from reading “Love’s As Warm As Tears,” whether it be simply learning about God or love, or, for a Christian, identifying new aspects of his or her religious identity, just as I did as I sat in a little orange tent on a cold spring day in the Grand Canyon.