I came across this poem attributed to a 1954 letter from C.S. Lewis to Dorothy Sayers and published in Part 2 of his collected poems. Its online text is remarkably pure; besides capitalization and misplaced or missing punctuation marks (as well as == for 'equals'), the only variants I found are the presence of an introductory indefinite article in the title, and the majority error of "Oh" for "On" at the head of the last stanza. I give here my critical compilation:
EVOLUTIONARY HYMN
to the tune Mannheim, a parody of “Lead Us, Heavenly Father, Lead Us"
Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future's endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.
Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,
In the present what are they
While there's always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we're going,
We can never go astray.
To whatever variation
Our posterity may turn
Hairy, squashy, or crustacean,
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern,
Tusked or toothless, mild or ruthless,
Towards that unknown god we yearn.
Ask not if it's god or devil,
Brethren, lest your words imply
Static norms of good and evil
(As in Plato) throned on high;
Such scholastic, inelastic,
Abstract yardsticks we deny.
Far too long have sages vainly
Glossed great Nature's simple text;
He who runs can read it plainly,
'Goodness = what comes next.'
By evolving, Life is solving
All the questions we perplexed.
On then! Value means survival-
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present,
Standards, though it may well be).
I was surprised that none had succumbed to the temptation to change the first instance of 'god' to 'goal', but apparently this poem has only been passed on by prudent scribes; I suspect the major variant is from the oldest cyberscript, and has only been corrected because internal evidence is so overwhelmingly against it.
You can see allusions in this poem to the Greek classics, Scripture, and Lewis Carroll. "Chop and change" is an old English idiom for 'peddle' found in early translations of 2 Corinthians 2:17, but Lewis is using it here in its modern meaning. "Jam to-morrow," referring to a promise that can never be fulfilled, is a pun on a feature of Latin Grammar immortalized by the White Queen in Through the Looking Glass.
In this poem Lewis mocks what he called "The Evolution Myth" in which every genetic change is believed to be inevitably for the better, maugre all evidence to the contrary. And he points out what evolutionists themselves are rue to admit, that the struggle to survive runs contrary to the cultural norms that are the very fibre of civilisation, there being no other evolutionary standard than that of survival by whatever means necessary.
Lewis, who started his career as an ardent evolutionist and often co-opted evolutionary theory to explain his theology, clearly became quite disillusioned by its empty promises as he entered his latter years, this poem coming out in his final decade of life.
