Lord: and shall not fear, and shall do excellently in the
All-Excellent. I sank away from Thee, and I wandered, O my God, too
much astray from Thee my stay, in these days of my youth, and I became
to myself a barren land.




BOOK III


To Carthage I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a
cauldron of unholy loves. I loved not yet, yet I loved to love, and
out of a deep-seated want, I hated myself for wanting not. I sought
what I might love, in love with loving, and safety I hated, and a
way without snares. For within me was a famine of that inward food,
Thyself, my God; yet, through that famine I was not hungered; but
was without all longing for incorruptible sustenance, not because
filled therewith, but the more empty, the more I loathed it. For
this cause my soul was sickly and full of sores, it miserably cast
itself forth, desiring to be scraped by the touch of objects of sense.
Yet if these had not a soul, they would not be objects of love. To
love then, and to be beloved, was sweet to me; but more, when I
obtained to enjoy the person I loved, I defiled, therefore, the spring
of friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and I beclouded its
brightness with the hell of lustfulness; and thus foul and unseemly, I
would fain, through exceeding vanity, be fine and courtly. I fell
headlong then into the love wherein I longed to be ensnared. My God,
my Mercy, with how much gall didst Thou out of Thy great goodness
besprinkle for me that sweetness? For I was both beloved, and secretly