All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you. <br />I never had a selfless thought since I was born. <br />I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through: <br />I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn. <br /> <br />Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek, <br />I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin: <br />I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek-- <br />But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin. <br /> <br />Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack. <br />I see the chasm. And everything you are was making <br />My heart into a bridge by which I might get back <br />From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking. <br /> <br />For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains <br />You give me are more precious than all other gains.<br /><br />Clive Staples Lewis<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/as-the-ruin-falls/
