This is a poem by C.S. Lewis that I have been enjoying lately. Maybe you will too:
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.
What does this poem say to you?
I can’t really tell if this is a love poem or not, but if applied to God, the last sentence is awesome.
Also, what’s funny is the other line you bolded where he puts Greek and love in the same sentence, because he wrote a book about the Greek words for love.
Good stuff, though.
I took the last line of the first stanza to mean that he was saying “you” to God, but I could be wrong. the “you” could be someone else he’s talking to…