I have been reading Augustine's Confessions, and was struck by these lines. From Peter Constantine's translation, and I've set it into free verse:
Where are you going to along such harsh ways?
Where are you going?
The good that you love is from Him;
but it is through Him that it is good and sweet,
and justly will it turn bitter,
because unjustly loved is anything that is from God
if God is to be forsaken for it.
Why would you insist on walking such difficult and laborious paths?
There is no rest where you seek it.
Seek what you seek,
but it is not where you are seeking it.
You seek a blessed life in the land of death;
it is not there.
For how can there be a blessed life
where there is only death?
