St. Augustin of Hippo.

"Late have I loved you, O Beauty, so ancient and so new, late have I loved you! And behold, you were within me and I was outside, and there I sought for you, and in my deformity I rushed headlong into the well-formed things that you have made. You were with me, and I was not with you. . . .[But] you called and cried out to me and broke open my deafness; you shone forth upon me and you scattered my blindness; you breathed fragrance and I drew in my breath. . . ." from a great book After meditation: from St Augustine of Hippo, “The Confessions,” AN ANTHOLOGY OF CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM, ed. Harvey D. Egan (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1996), p. 68.