All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you
I’ve 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, reassurance, 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.

(“As the Ruin Falls” by C. S. Lewis)