Thursday, January 5, 2012

As the Ruin Falls

This is my favorite C.S. Lewis poem. Written in traditional form but it sounds like a free verse to me. The tone is similar to Wordsworth's "Surprised by Joy" but this one is with a fitting ending – hope and joy comes in at the last verse. Any anthology that does not include this is incomplete.


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.

~C.S.Lewis, Poems, “As the Ruin Falls” (1st pub. 1964), pp. 109-110.

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