Narrative verse Book

With poetry, it's pretty easy to not pick up on things, and when you're reading long poems in which the plot builds on itself (i.e. narrative poems) not picking up on things can cause issues for the overall experience. I had a lot of that going on with this one.
I think I got the most out of "Dymer", the first poem in the collection. It was interesting to see Lewis already referring to our present worldy experience as "the shadow-lands of earth" at a stage in which he still regarded belief in a higher reality to be mere deception. I didn't quite follow all the twists and turns of the main character's philosophical development, but I was struck by the overarching clash between his desire for fulfilment ("For earth must hold / One rich thing sealed as Dymer's from of old") and an insurmountable sense of meaninglessness ("Earth is a sinking ship, a house whose wall / Is tottering while you sweep; the roof will fall").