CS Lewis

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As the Ruin Falls

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

CS Lewis
Submitted: Friday, January 03, 2003


Read poems about / on: peace, god, heart, friend

Comments about this poem (As the Ruin Falls by CS Lewis )

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  • Wm Ryle (5/26/2009 10:35:00 PM)

    C.S. Lewis suffererd tremendous losses in life. His mother died when he was ten. His best friend 'Paddy' was killed in WWI, after which Lewis provided for the support of Paddy's sister and mother. That was a huge sacrifice which monopolized the middle years of his life. And then when he finally did find his soul-mate in marriage (Joy Gresham) , he lost that Joy to cancer.

    I think this poem to be his pained confession that learning who he truly was and learning how to truly love came at the expense of seeing the one he most truly loved to be dying... to see that 'bridge that was bringing him... back from exile crumbling.'

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  • Ralph Davis (9/24/2008 11:30:00 AM)

    My introduction to C. S. Lewis' poetry, set to song by Phil Keaggy. Apparently written to Joy Gresham, Lewis' wife dying of cancer.

    'The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.' - Albert Einstein

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