Reading · Backward Mutters

In the summer of 2019, I audited a class taught by Malcolm Guite at Regent College titled, The Arrows of Desire. During that class, Dr. Guite tranced a phrase which he picked up from William Blake that spoke to what C.S. Lewis would later call the inconsolable longing. During that class, everything I thought had been Lewis’ seems to have found its inspiration in Dante or even more so, in Augustine.

Rereading the Confessions, I came across this passage which, though new to me, is a well-known passage (Lib. 10, 26. 37-29, 40: CSEL 33, 255-256). It reads,

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Late have I loved you,
Beauty so ancient and so new,
Late have I loved You!
Behold, You were within,
But I outside,
Seeking there for You,
And upon the shapely things You have made
I rushed headlong –
I, misshapen.
You were with me,
But I was not with You.
They held me back far from you,
Those things which would have no being,
Were they not in you.
You called, shouted, broke through
My deafness;
You flared, blazed, banished
My blindness;
You lavished Your fragrance,
I gasped;
And now I pant for you;
I tasted you,
And now I hunger and thirst

Here’s my riffing on Augustine. You may listen to me read it via the player below.

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And here’s the text.

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Only late, have I loved You
One, Ancient, One Who
Is Beauty, makes all things new.
Only late have I loved You.
You are inside the heart of all things
And I, outside, wandered the wild
Everywhere among the shapely things
You made, unheeding as a child.
I ran headlong, mis-shapened into
The plain I would not plainly see.
A runaway, though running from You,
You were there always with me.
Entangled, ensnared by good things
Which, were they not made by You,
Could not be good, would not be—
Unless they were not always in You.
Into my greedy grasping deafness,
You whispered, shouted, broke through
My wrestling, wresting restlessness—
Called me out of the dark, made new.
And from the dark of my dark tomb
Through my hiding, You came finding,
For darkness is as light to You
Who drew me out from my self-blinding.
I first knew You through some sense
That hinted you were loving-kind.
It was not sight, but like the fragrance
Of a flower’s scent in the wind...
You, Who thirsted from the tree,
I thirst for You, and pant as the hart
For living streams that taste of Thee
In Whom I have all not merely part.
Now I thirst, hunger, and adore
Not for the things, but for You,
and more and more and more….

Only Late Have I Love You

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