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.
—C. S. Lewis, Poems, “As the Ruin Falls” (pub 1964, pp. 109-110)
Clive is the man.
Yes, he was.
It would seem that this poem was written to someone else than God. Joy? The fourth line of the first stanza bears this out. God and others are secondary the “you” to whom the poem is aimed. It nevertheless speaks directly of how we use God as well as others we love.
The first time I heard this poem was when Phil Keaggy released his album, “Love Broke Thru.” That was awhile back…1976. He put the poem to music in a song titled the same as the poem. Not being a very careful reader, I thought the poem was all about God. Of course, at the end of the day, it is all about God but it seems he was writing to someone else.