Reading -- for the first time, to my shame -- through St Augustine's Confessions, I worked my way through his interminable inquiry concerning memory (fascinating, though), and suddenly came upon this, which of course I remembered as it is often quoted. But to find it embedded in its original context was an immediate and almost spine-chilling thrill: you can imagine Augustinus, having sweated away on his philosophical quest, suddenly breaking out in this immortal prose poem of pure devotion. How can you not love this man?
Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi !
Et ecce intus eras et ego foris
et ibi te quærebam et in ista formosa, quæ fecisti, deformis irruebam.
Mecum eras, et tecum non eram.
Ea me tenebant longe a te, quæ si in te non essent, non essent.
Vocasti et clamasti et rupisti surdidatem meam,
coruscasti, splenduisti et fugasti cæcitatem meam;
fragrasti, et duxi spiritum et anhelo tibi,
gustavi, et esurio et sitio,
tetigisti me, et exarsi in pacem tuam.
Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!
And look, you were within me and I outside,
and it was there that I searched for you, and into the lovely things you created all unlovely I plunged.
You were with me, and I was not with you.
Those things kept me far from you which if they had not been in you would not have been at all.
You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness,
You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness;
You breathed your fragrance on me, and I drew in breath and pant for you,
I have tasted you, and I hunger and thirst.
You touched me, and at once I burned for your peace.
And such a pleasure to find the original Latin, the compactness of which only increases the emotion.
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