“Few have the imagination to see reality.”- Goethe

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-imprsoned, 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.