Mediaeval Latin

36
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON LIBRARIE
Estate of Solomon Katz

MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS
By the same Author
THE WANDERING SCHOLARS

THE DESERT FATHERS
BEASTS AND SAINTS
PETER ABELARD
MEDIAEVAL
LATIN LYRICS
by
HELEN WADDELL
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
PrinUd in Great Britain by
RICHAKD CLAY AND COMPANY, LTD.

BUKOAY
Suffolk
PREFACE
THE introduction to this collection of mediaeval Latin verse
was written some years ago in The Wandering Scholars, which
proved in the end to be not so much a study of the
Vagantes as a long digression, a kind of imperfect history of
mediaeval lyric. The excuse for that long digression is in
the half-articulate melody of the fragments of earlier verse
that follow, as timid in comparison with the ease of twelfth
and thirteenth century lyric as Sir Thomas Wyatt's un-
certain plucking at the strings with the flawless resonance
of Campion. Yet the one is the begetter of the other.
The lyric of the great age, 1 150 to 1250, has secret springs,
and scholars have made a good, if non-proven, case lor
Celtic and Arabic ; but the is in the pagan
deepest source
learning that flows like a sunk nver through the mediaeval
" "
centuries, the ancient fields whither Alcxun rose from
his bed to go morning after morning, thumbing the sleep
from his
eyes (discutit ex oculis noctuntos pottice somnos), with
the dawnhght fresh on the sea
Splendida dum rutilat roseis Aurora quadrigis

Per/widens pelagus nova luce liquidum.
It is for the sake of the unbroken tradition that the
Virgilian Copa and a handful of lyrics of the Silver Age
have been included, verse that by no straining of chronology
could be called mediaeval. They are here because by means
of them the line of descent can be more clearly traced ;
they were the wayfaring-tree, the lenta uiburna that could
bear transplanting, where the cypress of the greater Roman
verve must stand solitary. Petronius is closer to the first
Italian Bonnet writers than he is to Horace; and in the
anthologies of the Codex Salmasianus and the lost Beauvais
manuscript of Isidore, as well as in Ausonius, the secret
romantic quality of Latin, "pnucbtsi viamfloris" is unsealed.
The mediaeval Venus is less the royal goddess of the Atneid
PREFACE
than the glimmering gracious figure of the Pervigiliwn
Veneris, the Dione of the April woods in lyric after lyric
:
the lovers cry to her by the lovelier name

"
Et quibus es Venus
Esto
Yet in anthologies omission is a worse thing than inclu-

sion and the omissions here may well seem unaccountable.
:
There are five lyrics from Fortunatus, but not the two that
are his immortality: Hrabanus Maurus is here, but not
his pupil and far greater poet, the ill-starred Gottschalk:
"
there is no trace of the glorious rhythms of Roma nobilis
orbis et domina," nor of Hildebert who has the antique
gravity, nor of Gautier dc Ch&tillon, and only a single lyric
From the tiny but precious collection of the Arundel MS.
I tried to translate them, and could not. To those born
with this kind of restlessness, this curiosity to transmute the
beauty of one language into another, although this baser
alchemy is apt to turn the gold to copper and at worst
to lead, a great phrase in the Latin, something familiar
in the landscape, some touch of almost contemporary desire
or pain, may waken the recreative trouble yet a greater
;
phrase, a cry still more poignant, may leave the mind the
"
quieter for its passing. A man cannot say
"
I will trans-
late," any more than he can say I will compose poetry."
In this minor art also, the wind blows where it lists.
In one thing the translator is happy he walks with good
:
companions. He is a kind of Old Mortality, his business,

like RaduHus Glabcr when they harboured him at St.
Germain d'Auxcrrc, to go about with hammer and chisel,
reviving the defaced inscriptions on the tombs of his
brethren. Places where men have once been and now are
not are older and more sacred, but at the same time
friendlier, than virgin soil that has no history. And these
poems, preserved by the piety of old monastic houses now
themselves decayed, and printed in the last hundred
yean
by scholars as patient as the men who first transcribed them,
Thomas Wright and Edelstand du M6ril and Ernest
Dtimmler, Ludwig Traube and Wilhclm Meyer and Paul
vi
PREFACE
von Winterfeld (to make mention only of the dead), are
after all but epitaphs of their first makers: and like all
mediaeval epitaphs, they out for that remembrance that
cry
is itself a prayer. There is no longer either tomb or in-
scription in what was once the Abbey of St. Martin at
Tours; but in his Lament for the Cuckoo, his Winter and his
"
lieth the Lord Abbot Alcuin of blessed memory,
Epitaph, still "
who died in peace on the nineteenth of May
To the unwearied patience of Mr. Saintsbury and Mr.
Gregory Smith, who read the proofs of the earlier book
and have continued that good office for the second, and
of Miss H. L. Lorimer and Mr. G. J. Fordyce, I owe an
unusually heavy debt. Whatever assault these versions
commit upon the older language, it is not for lack of
still
warning and good counsel, and such blunders as still

remain, because the mould of the verse had set and I was
too obstinate to break it, seem small to me in respect of
those from which their knowledge delivered me.
The biographical notes appended cover something of the
same ground as The Wandering Scholars, but with more
detail. The account of the estrangement between Ausonius
and Paulinus of Nola is taken from the earlier book, and
a few lyrics which have already appeared in it are included
here for the sake of completeness. For books on the
subject other than the original sources given in the notes,
the reader is referred to the list at the end of the Scholars,
and, especially for the more sober poets, to the remarkable
in Mr. F. J. E, Raby's History of Christian
bibliography
Latin Poetry (Oxford, 1 927) Valuable books which have been
.
publishea since then are Mr. Stephen Gaselee's Oxford Book

of Medieval Latin Verse (1928) ;Professor P. S. Allen's The
Romanesque Lyric (University of North Carolina Press, 1928) ;
the Abb6 Tardi's Fortunat (Paris, 1927) ; and Vagantenlieder,
Ulich and Manillas (Jena, 1927), which supplies a very
much needed text for some poems at least of the Carmina
Bwrana, of which Schmeller's edition, first published in 1847,
has earned the obloquy and affection of eighty years.
HELEN WADDELL.
PRIMROSE HILL, August, 1929.
vii
POSTSCRIPT
IN the years since 1929 I have had suggestions and help in
revision from many readers, notably Mr. C. J. Foroyce
and Mr. J. H. Mozley ; and from Henry Broadbcnt and
Sir Frederick Pollock, bonae memoriae. Only two sections
of the definitive text of the Carmina Burana (Hilka and
Schumann, Heidelberg, 1930) have as yet been published:
but I have gratefully taken advantage of it in such poems
as were available. Some account of material published
since 1027 will be found in the revised bibliography to the
sixth edition of The Wandering Scholars.
The intervening years have made more apparent to me
the of a complaint brought by a discriminating critic
Justice
against the principle of selection in this : that
it
" anthology
has preferred the hilarity and mockery of the last masks
"
of paganism a harsh phrase for verse as innocent as
Herrick's to the sanctum saeculare of the mediaeval hymns.
Yet it is a preference in seeming only. The greatest
things in mediaeval Latin, its living and victorious
splendours," arc not here, because I cannot translate them.
Even in secular Latin there are things before which trans-
lation is abashed : for these others, nondum propalatam esse
wan sanctorum : " the way into the holiest of all was not
yet made manifest."
H. W.
April, 1948.
vm
MEDLEVAL LATIN LYRICS
MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS
APPENDIX VERGILIANA
Copa Surisca
COPA Surisca caput Graeca rcdimita mitclla,

crispum sub crotalo docta movere latus,
ebria fumosa saltat lasciva taberna
ad cubitum raucos excutiens calamos.
quid iuvat acstivo defessum pulvcre abesse,
quam potius bibulo decubuisse toro?
sunt scaphia ct kelebes, cyathi, rosa, tibia, chordae,
et triclia umbrosis frigida harundinibus.
en et, Maenalio quae garrit dulce sub antro,
more sonat.
rustica pastoris fistula
est ct vappa cado nuper defusa picato
et strepitans rauco murmure rivus aquae,
sunt ctiam crocco violae de flore corollae,
sertaque purpurea lutea mixta rosa,
et quae virgineo libata Achelois ab amne
lilia vixnineis attulit in calathis.
sunt et cascoli quos iuncea fiscina siccat,
sunt autumnali cerea pruna die.
castaneaeque nuces et suave rubentia mala,
est hie munda Ceres, est Amor, est Bromius.
sunt et mora cruenta et lentis uva raccmis,
et pendet iunco caeruleus cucumis.
est tuguri custos armatus falce saligna,
sed non et vasto est inguine terribilis.
APPENDIX VERGILIANA
Dancing CM of Syria
DANCING girl of Syria, her hair caught up with a fillet :
Very subtle in swaying those quivering flanks of hers

In time to the Castanet's rattle: half-drunk hi the smoky
tavern,
She dances, lascivious, wanton, clashing the rhythm.
And what's the use, if you're tired, of being out in the dust
and the heat,
When you might as well lie still and get drunk on your
settle?
Here's tankards and cups and measures and roses and pipes
and fiddles
And a trellis-arbour cool with its shade of reeds,
And somewhere somebody piping as if it were Pan's own
grotto,
On a shepherd's flute, the way they do in the fields.
And here's a thin little wine, just poured from a cask that
is
pitchy,
And a brook running by with the noise and gurgle of
running water.
There's even garlands for you, violet wreaths and saffron,

And golden mclilot twining with crimson roses,
And lilies plucked where they grow by the virgin river,
Achelois brings them in green willow baskets

And little cheeses for you that they dry in baskets of rushes,
And plums that ripen hi the autumn weather,
And chestnuts, and the cheerful red of apples.
In brief, here's Ceres, Love, and rowdy Bacchus
And red-stained blackberries, and grapes in bunches,
And hanging from his withe seagreen cucumber.
And here's the little god who keeps the arbour,
Fierce with his sickle and enormous belly.
3
MEDIJEVAL LATUt LTR1CS
hue Calybita vcni, lassus iam sudat ascllus,
parce illi, Vestae delicium est asinus.

nunc cantu crebro rumpunt arbusta cicadae.
nunc vcpris in gclida scdc laccrta latct.
si sapis, acstivo rccubans te proluc vitro,
seu vis crystalli ferre novos calices.

heia age paxnpinea fessus rcquiescc sub umbra
et gravidum rosco necte caput strophio ;
per morsum tenerae decerpens ora puellae.

a pereat cui sunt prisca supercilia!
quid cineri ingrato servas bene olentia scrta?

anne coronate vis lapide ista tegi ?
pone merum et talos. pereat qui crastina curat.
Mors aurem vellens, '* vivite," ait, " venio."
MEDIAEVAL LATW LTR1CS
Hither, O pilgrim !
Sec, the little donkey
Is tired and wistful. Spare the little donkey !
Did not a goddess love a little donkey ?
It's very hot.

Cicadae out in the trees are shrilling, ear-splitting,
The very lizard is hiding for coolness under his hedge.
If you have sense you'll lie still and drench yourself from
your wine cup,
Or maybe you prefer the look of your wine in crystal ?
Heigh ho, but it's good to lie here under the vines,
And bind on your heavy head a garland of roses,
And reap the scarlet lips of a pretty girL
You be damned, you there with your Puritan eye-brows !
What thanks will cold ashes give for the sweetness of

garlands?
Or it your mind to hang a rose wreath upon your
is
tombstone?
Set down the wine and the dice, and perish who thinks of
to-morrow !
" "
Here's Death twitching my ear,forLive," says he,
I'm coming."
MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS
PETRONIUS ARBITER
PARVULA secure tcgitur mihi culmine sedes
uvaquc plena mero fccunda pendet ab ulmo.
dant rami cerasos, dant mala rubentia silvae,
Palladiumque ncmus pingui se vertice frangit.
iam qua diductos potat levis area fontcs,
Corycium mihi surgit olus malvaeque supinac
et non sollicitos missura papavera somnos.
praeterea sive alitibus contexere fraudem

seu magis imbcllcs libuit circumdare cervos
aut tereti lino pavidum subducere piscem,
hos tantum novere dolos mea sordida rura.
i nunc et vitac fugicntis tempora vende
divitibus cenis. me manet exitus idem,
si
hie precor inveniat consumptaquc tempora poscat.

PETRONIUS ARBITER
SMALL house and quiet roof tree, shadowing elm
Grapes on the vine and cherries ripening,
Red apples in the orchard, Pallas' tree
Breaking with olives, and well-watered earth,
And fields of kale and heavy creeping mallows
And poppies that will surely bring me sleep.
And if I go a-snaring for the birds
Or timid deer, or angling the shy trout,
'Tis all the guile that my poor fields will know.
Go now, yea, go, and sell your life, swift life,
For golden feasts. If the end waits me too,
I pray it find me here, and here shall ask
The reckoning from me of the vanished hours.
MEDIAEVAL LATW LTRICS
PETRONIUS ARBITER
O OTUS vita mihi dulcius, o mare I felix
cui licet ad meas
terras ire subinde !
o formosa dies ! hoc quondam rure solebam

Naiadas alterna sollicitare xnanul
hie fontis lacus est, sinus cgerit algas
illic :
haec statio est tacitis fida cupidinibus.

pervixi :
neque enim fortuna malignior unquam
cripiet nobis quod prior hora dedit.
PETRONIUS ARBITER
O SHORE more dear to me than life O sea
! !
Most happy I that unto my own lands

Have leave to come at last. So fair a day !
Here it was long ago I used to swim

Startling the Naiads with alternate stroke.
Here is the pool, and here the seaweed sways.
Here is the harbour for a stilled desire.
Yea, I have lived : never shall Fate unkind

Take what was given in that earlier hour.
PETRONIUS ARBITER
LECTO compositus vix prima silcntia noctis
carpebam et somno lumina victa dabam,
cum me saevusAmor prensat sursumquc capillis
cxcitat ct laccrum pcrvigilare iubct.
" Tu "
famulus meus," inquit, amcs cum mille puellas,
"
iacerc
solus, io, solus, dure, potes?
exsilio et pedibus nudis tunicaque soluta
omne iter ingredior, nullum iter cxpedio.
nunc propero, nunc ire piget, rursumquc redire
pocnitet, et pudor est stare via media,
ecce tacent voces hominum strepitusque viarum,
volucrum cantus fidaque turba canum
et :
solus ego ex cunctis paveo somnumque torumque,

et sequor imperium, magne Gupido, tuum.
PETRONIUS ARBITER
LAID on bed in silence of the night,
my
I had given my weary eyes to sleep,
scarce
When Love the cruel caught me by the hair,
And roused me, bidding me his vigil keep.
"
O thou my slavey thou of a thousand loves,
Canst thou, O hard of heart, lie here alone? "
Bare-foot, ungirt, I raise me up and go,
I seek all roads, and find my road in none.
I hasten on, I stand still in the way,
Ashamed to turn back, and ashamed to stay.
There is no sound of voices, hushed the streets,
Not a bird twitters, even the dogs are still.
I, I alone of all men dare not sleep,

But follow, Lord of Love, thy imperious will.
ii
PETRONIUS ARBITER
Sir nox ilia diu nobis dilecta, Nealce,
quae te prima mco pectore coxnposuit ;
torus et lecti genius secretaque iampas,

sit
quis tenera in nostrum vcneris arbitrium,

ergo age duremus, quaxnvis adoleverit aetas,
utamurque annis quos mora parva terct.
extendere amores
fas et iura sinunt veteres ;
fac cite quod coeptum est, non cito desinere.
12
PETRONIUS ARBITER
NEALCE, be that night for ever dear,
The night that laid you first upon my heart.
Dear be the couch, the quiet burning lamp,
And you, so tender, come into my power.
Still let us love, although the years be hasting,
And use the hours that brief delay is wasting.
Old love should last: O Love, do thou forfend
That what was swift begun, were swift to end.
MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS
PETRON1US ARBITER
FOEDA est in coitu ct brcvis voluptas,
ct taedet Veneris statim peractae.
non ergo ut pecudes libidinosae
caeci protinus irruamus illuc
(nam languescit amor peritque flamma) ;-
sed sic sic sine fine feriati
ct tccum iaceamus osculantcs.
hie nullus labor est ruborque nullus :
hoc iuvit, iuvat et diu iuvabit;
hoc non deficit incipitque semper.
PETRONIUS ARBITER
DELIGHT of lust is gross and brief
And weariness treads on desire.
Not beasts are we, to rush on it,
Love sickens there, and dies the fire.
But in eternal holiday,
Thus, thus, lie still and kiss the hours away.
No weariness is here, no shamefastness,
Here is, was, shall be, all delightsomeness.
And here no end shall be,
But a beginning everlastingly.
MEDLEVAL LATDt LTRKS
PETRONIUS ARBITER
Si Phocbi soror es, mando tibi, Delia, causam,
ut fratri quae peto verba feras
scilicet :
" marmore Sicanio struxi

tibi, Delphice, templum,
et levibus calamis Candida verba dedi.
nunc si nos audis atque es divinus, Apollo,
die mihi, qui nummos non habet, unde petat."
16
MEDIEVAL LATIN LTJRICS
PETRONIUS ARBITER
SISTER art to Phoebus, Lady Moon?
Then, I pray you, take to him my prayer.
" God of
Delphi, of Sicilian marble
I have built a fane to worship there,
I have sung a shining song and piped it
On a slender reed, and all for thee.
Dost thou hear me? Art a god, Apollo?
Tell me then a man whose purse is hollow,
Will find the wherewithal to fill it where? "
MED1MVAL LATIN LTRICS
PETRONIUS ARBITER
SOMNIA, quae mentes ludunt volitantibus umbris,
non dclubra deum nee ab aethere numina mittunt,
sed sibl quisque facit. nam cumprostrata sopore
urget membra quies et mens
sine pondere ludit,
quidquid luce fuit tenebrisiagit. oppida bello
qui quatit et flammis xniserandas emit urbes,
tela videt versasque acies et funera regum
atque cxundantcs profuso sanguine campos.

qui causas orare solcnt, legesque forumque
et pavidi cernunt inclusum chorte tribunal,
condit avarus opes defossumque invenit aurum.
venator saltus canibus quatit. eripit undis
aut premit eversam periturus navita puppem.
scribit amatori merctrix, dat adultera munus :
et cards in somnis leporis vestigia lustrat.

in noctis spatium miserorum vulnera durant.
18
PETRONIUS ARBITER
DREAMS, dreams that mock us with their flitting shadows,
They come not from the temples of the gods,
They send them not, the powers of the air.
Each man makes his own dreams. The body lies
Quiet in sleep, what time the mind set free
Follows in darkness what it sought by day.
He who makes kingdoms quake for fear and sends
Unhappy cities ruining in fire,
Sees hurtling blows and broken fighting ranks
And death of kings and sodden battle fields.
The lawyer sees the judge, the crowded court,
The miser hides his coin, digs buried treasure,
The hunter shakes the forests with his hounds,
The sailor rescues from the sea his ship,
Or drowning, clings to it. Mistress to lover
Writes a love-letter the adulteress
:
Yields in her sleep, and in his sleep the hound

Is hot upon the traces of the hare.
The wounds of the unhappy in the night
Do but prolong their pain.
MEDIEVAL LATIN LTWCS
PETRONIUS ARBITER
QUALIS nox fuit ilia, di
dcaequc,
quam haesimus calentcs
mollis torus,
et transfudimus hinc et hinc labellis
errantes animas. valete, curae
mortales.
MS. OF ST. RfiMY AT RHEIMS

PULCHRA comis annisque deccns et Candida vultu
dulce quiescent! basia blanda dabas.
si te iam vigilans non unquam cernere possum,
somne, precor, iugiter lumina nostra tene.
PETRONIUS ARBITER
AH God, ah God, that night when we two clung
So our hungry lips
close,
Transfused each into each our hovering souls,
Mortality's eclipse !
MS. OF ST. RfiMY AT RHEIMS

YOUNG and gold-haired, fair of face,
Thou gav'st me tender kisses in my sleep.
If waking I may never look upon thee,
O Sleep, I pray you, never let me wake !
ax
\IEDLEVAL LATIN LTRICS
MS. OF BEAUVAIS
TE vigilans oculis, animo tc nocte require,
victa iacent solo cum mea membra toro.
vidi ego me tecum falsa sub imagine somni.
sornnia tu vinces, si mihi vcra venis.
MS. OFj BEAUVAIS

O BLANDOS oculos et inquictos
et quadam propria nota loquaces i
illic et Venus et leves Amores

atque ipsa in medio sedet Voluptas.
22
MS. OF BEAUVAIS
BY day mine eyes, by night my soul desires thee,
Weary, I lie alone.
Once in a dream it seemed thou wert beside me;
O far beyond all dreams,if thou wouldst come !
MS. OF BEAUVAIS
O LOVELY restless eyes, that speak
In language's despite!
For there sits Beauty, and the little Loves :
Between them dwells Delight.

murtLiaatuaa
CODEX SALMASIANUS
DIG formosa Venus, si nescis amanti

quid agis,
ferre vicera? omne decus, durn deperit aetas,

pent
marcent rorcm rosa

post violac, perdit odorem,
lilia vcrnum candore

post posito liquewunt
haec metuas et amanti

exempla precor, semper
redde vicem, amatur.

quia semper amat, qui semper
CODEX SALMASIANUS
LOVELY Venus, what's to do
If the loved loves not again?
Beauty passes, youth's undone,
Violets wither, 'spite of dew,
Roses shrivel in the sun,
Lilies all their whiteness stain.
Lady, take these home to you,
And who loves thee, love again.
AUSONIUS
Dt rosis nascentibus
VER crat ct blando mordentia frigora sensu

spirabat croceo inane revccta dies,
strictior Eoos praecesserat aura iugales,
aestiferum suadens anticipare diem,
errabam riguis per quadrua compita in hortis,
mature cupiens me vegetare die.
vidi concretas per gramina flexa pruinas
pendere aut holerum stare cacuminibus
caulibus et patulis teretes conludere guttas.
.
vidi Paestano gaudere rosaria cultu,

exoriente novo roscida Lucifero.
rara pruinosis canebat gemma frutetis,
ad primi radios interitura die.
ambigeres, raperctne rosis Aurora ruborem
an daret et flores tingcret orta dies,
ros unus, color unus, et unum mane duorum.
sideris et floris nam domina una Venus,
forsan et unus odor : sed celsior ille per auras
difflatur, spirat proximus iste rnagis.
communis Paphie dea sideris et dea floris
praecipit unius muricis esse habitum.
momentum intererat, quo se nascentia florum
germina comparibus dividerent spatiis.
26
MEDIAEVAL LATIJf LTRICS
AUSONIUS
On nswblown roses
SPRING, and the sharpness of the golden dawn.

Before the sun was up a cooler breeze
Had blown, in promise of a day of heat,
And I was walking in my formal garden,
To freshen me, before the day grew old.
I saw the hoar on the bent grasses,
frost stiff
on the cabbage leaves,
Sitting in fat globes
And all my Paestum roses laughing at me,
Dew-drenched, and in the East the morning star,
And here and there a dewdrop glistening white,
That soon must perish in the early sun.
Think you, did Dawn steal colour from the roses,

Or was it new born day that stained the rose ?
To each one dew, one crimson, and one morning,
To star and rose, their lady Venus one.
Mayhap one fragrance, but the sweet of Dawn
Drifts through the sky, and closer breathes the rose.
A moment dies : this bud that was new born

Has burgeoned even fold on even fold;
This still is green, with her close cap of leaves,
This shows a red stain on her tender sheath.
This the first crimson of the loosened bud ;
haec viret angusto fbliorum tecta galero,
hanc tenui folio purpura rubra notat,
haec aperit prirni fastigia celsa obelisci,
mucronem absolvcns purpurei capitis.
vcrtice collcctos ilia exsinuabat amictus
iara mcditans foliis se numerare suis.
nee mora: ridentis calathi patefecit honorem
prodens inclusi sexnina dcnsa croci.
haec modo, quae toto rutilaverat igne comarum,
pallida collapsis descritur foliis.
mirabar celerem fugitiva aetate rapinam

et dum nascentur consenuissc rosas.
ecce et defluxit rutili coma punica floris,
dum loquor, et tellus tecta rubore micat.
tot species, tantosque ortus variosque novatus
una dies aperit, conficit ipsa dies,
conquerimur, Natura, brevis quod gratia florum est.
ostentata oculis ilico dona rapis.

quam longa una dies, aetas tarn longa rosarum,
quaa pubescentes iuncta scnecta premit.
quam modo nascentem rutilus conspexit Eous,
hanc rediens sero vespere vidit anum.
sed bene quod paucis licet interitura diebus
succedcns aevum prorogat ipsa suum.
collige, virgo, rosas, dum flos novus et nova pubes,
et memor esto aevum sic propcrare tuum.
And now she thinks to unwind her coverings,
And lo the glory of the radiant chalice,
!
Scattering the close seeds of her golden heart.

One moment, all on fire and crimson glowing,
now and bare and desolate.
All pallid
I marvelled at the flying rape of time ;
But now a rose was born : that rose is old.
Even as I speak the crimson petals float
Down drifting, and the crimsoned earth is bright.
So many lovely things, so rare, so young,

A day begat them, and a day will end.
O Earth, to give a flower so brief a grace !
As long as a day is long, so long the life of a rose.

The golden sun at morning sees her born,
And late at eve returning finds her old.
Yet wise she, that
is hath so soon to die,
And lives her life in some succeeding rose.
O maid, while youth is with the rose and thce,
Pluck thou the rose : life is as swift for thee.
AUSONIUS
Mosella
Quis color ille vadis, seras cum propulit umbras

Hesperus et viridi perfudit monte Mosellam !
tota natant crispis iuga motibus et trcmit absens

pampinus et vitreis vindemia turgct in undis.
AUSONIUS
Silva MyrUa
ERRANTES silva in magna et sub luce maligna
inter harundineasque comas gravidumque papaver
et tacitos sine labe lacus, sine murmure rivos,
quorum per ripas nebuloso lumine marccnt

fleti, olim regum et puerorum nomina, flores.
MEDIMVAL LATIN LTRICS
AUSONIUS
Evening on the Moselle
WHAT colour are they now, thy quiet waters?

The evening star has brought the evening light,
And filled the river with the green hillside ;
The hill-tops waver in the rippling water,
Trembles the absent vine and swells the grape
In thy clear crystal.
AUSONIUS
The Fields of Sorrow
THEY wander in deep woods, in mournful light,

Amid long reeds and drowsy headed poppies,
And lakes where no wave laps, and voiceless streams,
Upon whose banks in the dim light grow old
Flowers that were once bewailed names of kings.
MEDIAEVAL LATIJf LYRICS
AUSONIUS
Ad Uxorem
UXOR vivamus ut viximus ct tenearnus

nomina quae prizno sumpsimus in thalamo ;
nee ferat ulla dies, ut commutemur in aevo,
quin tibi sim iuvcnis tuque puella mihi.
Nestore sim quamvis provectior aexnulaque annis
vincas Cumanam tu quoque Deiphoben,
nos ignoremus quid sit matura senectus,
scire aevi meritum, non numerate decet.
MEDIAEVAL LATUf LTRKS
AUSONIUS
To his Wife
LOVE, let us live as we have lived, nor lose

The little names that were the first night's grace,
And never come the day that sees us old,
I your lad, and you my little lass.
still
Let mebe older than old Nestor's years,

And you the Sibyl, if we heed it not.
What should we know, we two, of ripe old age?
We'll have its richness, and the years forgot.
33
PAULINUS OF NOLA
Ad Ausonittm
NON inopes animi ncquc de fcritate legentes

descrtis habitarc locis, sed in ardua versi
sidcra spectantcsque deum veriquc profunda
pcrspicere intenti, dc vanis libcra curis
otia amant strcpitumque fori rerumque tumultus
cunctaque divinis inimica negotia donis
ct Christi impcrib ct amore salutis abhorrent
speque fideque deum sponsa mercede sequuntur,

quam referet certus non desperantibus auctor,
modo non vincant vacuis praesentia rebus,
si
quaeque videt spernat, quae non vidct ut mereatur

secreta ignitus penetrans caelestia sensus.
namque caduca patent nostris, acterna negantur
visibus, etnunc spe sequimur quod mente videmus.
spernentes varias, rerum spectacula, formas
et male corporeos bona sollicitantia visus.
attamen haec sedisse illis sententia visa est,
tota quibus iam lux patuit verique bonique,
venturi aeternum saecli et praesentis inane.
34
PAULINUS OF NOLA
To Ausonius
Nor that they beggared be in mind, or brutes,

That they have chosen their dwelling place afar
In lonely places: but their eyes are turned
To the high stars, the very deep of Truth.
Freedom they seek, an emptiness apart
From worthless hopes: din of the marketplace,
And all the noisy crowding up of things,
And whatsoever wars on the divine,
At Christ's command and for His love, they hate;
By faith and hope they follow after God,
And know their quest shall not be desperate,
If but the Present conquer not their souls
With hollow things that which they see they spurn
:
That they may come at what they do not sec,

Their senses kindled like a torch, that may
Blaze through the secrets of eternity.
The transient's open, everlastingness
Denied our sight ; yet still by hope we follow
The vision that our minds have seen, despising
The shows and forms of things, the loveliness
Soliciting for ill our mortal eyes.
The present's nothing but eternity
:
Abides for those on whom all truth, all good,

Hath shone, in one entire and perfect light.
35
MEDLEVAL LATIN LTRICS
PAULINUS OF NOLA
Ad Ausonitan
EGO te per omne quod datum mortalibus
et destinatum sacculum cst
claudente donee continebor corpore,
disccrnar orbe quolibet,
nee ore longe, nee remotum lumine
tenebo fibris insitum,
videbo corde, mente complectar pia,
ubique praesentem tnihi.
et cum solutus corporal! carcere,
terraque provolavero,
quo me locarit axe communis Pater,
illic quoque animo te geram.
neque finis idem, qui meo me corpore,

et amore laxabit tuo,
mens quippe, lapsis quae superstes artubus,
de stirpe durat caeliti,
sensus neccsse est simul et afFectus suos
retineat ut vitam suam;
et ut mori sic oblivisci non capit,
perenne vivax et memor.
MEDIAEVAL LATlJf LTRICS
PAULINUS OF NOLA
To Ausonius
I, THROUGH all chances that are given to mortals,

And through all fates that be,
So long as this close prison shall contain me,
Yea, though a world shall sunder me and thee,
Thee shall I hold, in every fibre woven,

Not with dumb lips, nor with averted face
Shall I behold thee, in my mind embrace thee,
Instant and present, thou, in every place.
Yea, when the prison of this flesh is broken,

And from the earth I shall have gone my way,
Wheresoe'er in the wide universe I stay me,
There shall I bear thee, as I do to-day.
Think not the end, that from my body frees me,

Breaks and unshackles from my love to thee;
Triumphs the soul above its house in ruin,
Deathless, begot of immortality.
must she keep her senses and affections,

Still
Hold them as dear as life itself to be.
Could she choose death, then might she choose forgetting:
Living, remembering, to eternity.
37
PAULINUS OF NOLA
Carmen in S. Ftlicem
VER avibus voces aperit, mea lingua suum ver

natalcm Fclicis habet, quo lumine ct ipsa
floret hiexns populis gaudentibus ; et licet atro
frigore tempus adhuc mediis hiberna pruinis

ducat, concretum terris canentibus annum!
ista luce tamen nobis pia gaudia laetum
ver faciunt. cedit pulsis a pectore curis
maeror, hiems animi ; fugiunt a corde sereno
nubila tristitiae. sicut cognoscit amicos
mitis hirundo dies et pinnis Candida nigris
ales et ilia piae turtur
cognata colurnbae,
nee nisivere novo resonant acalanthida dumi,
quacque sub hirsutis mutae modo saepibus errant
mox reduci passim laetantur vere volucres,
tarn variae linguis quam versicoloribus alls :
sic et ego agnosco diem, quern sancta quotannis

festa novant iusto magni Felicis honorc.
nunc placidum mihi ver gaudente renascitur anno,
nunc libet ora modis et carmina solvere votis
vocibus ct vernare novis.
PAULINUS OF NOLA
9
For St. Felix Day
SPRING wakens the birds' voices, but for me
My Saint's dayis my spring, and in
light its
For all his happy folk the winter flowers.

Keen frost without, midwinter, and the year
Rigid with cold and all the country white,

But gone the harder winter of the soul.
Even as the gentle swallow knows the days

That are his friends, the white bird with black wings,
And the kind turtle-doves, and no bird sings,
But silently slips through the ragged copses,
Till the day comes that the thorn trees are loud
With the greenfinches, then what shining wings
And what gay voices, so I know the day
Year after year that is St. Felix' Feast,
And know the springtime of my year is come,
And sing him a new song.
39
PAULINUS OF NOLA
Verbum ends
CERNE deum nostro velatum corporc Christum,

qui fragilis carncest, vcrbo cibus et cruce amarus :
dura superficies, verbum

crucis et crucis esca est,
coelestem Ghristi claudcns in came medullam.
sed cruce dulcis item, quia protulit arbore vitam
vita deus noster; ligno mea vita pependit,
ut staret mea vita deo. quid, vita, rependam
pro vita tibi, Christe, mea? nisi forte salutis
accipiam calicem, quo me tua dextra propinct,
ut sacro mortis pretiosae proluar haustu.
sed quid agam ? neque si proprium dem corpus in ignes
vilescamque mihi, nee sanguine debita fuso
iusta tibi solvam, quia me reddam tibi pro me,
et quicquid simili vice fecero, semper cro impar,
Christe, tibi, quia tu pro me mea, non tua, Christe,
debita soluisti, pro sends passus iniquis.
quis tibi penset amor? dominus mea forma fuisti,
ut servus tua forma forem ; et res magna putatur
mercari propriam de re pereunte salutem?
perpetuis mutare caduca et vendere terram,
caelum emerc? ecce deus quanto me carius emit
morte crucis? passus, delectus imagine send,
ut viles emeret pretioso sanguine servos.
MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTR1CS
PAULINUS OF NOLA
The Word of tht Cross
LOOK on thy God, Christ hidden in our flesh.

A bitter word, the cross, and bitter sight :
Hard rind without, to hold the heart of heaven.

Yet sweet it is; for God upon that tree
Did offer up His life upon that rood
:
My Life hung, that my life might stand in God.

Christ, what am I to give Thee for my life?
Unless take from Thy hands the cup they hold,
To cleanse me with the precious draught of death.
What shall I do ? My body to be burned ?
Make myself vile? The debt's not paid out yet.
Whate'er I do, it is but I and Thou,
And still do I come short, still must Thou pay
My debts, O Christ ; for debts Thyself hadst none.
What love may balance Thine? My Lord was found
In fashion like a slave, that so His slave
Might find himself in fashion like his Lord.
Think you the bargain's hard, to have exchanged
The transient for the eternal, to have sold
Earth to buy Heaven? More dearly God bought me.
PRUDENTIUS
Hjrnmus ante somnum
FLUXTT labor diei,

rcdit ct quictis hora,
blandus sopor vicissim
fcssos relaxat artus.
mens aestuans procellis

curisque sauciata
totis bibit mcdullis
obliviale poclum*
scrpit per omne corpus

Lethea vis, nee ullum
miseris doloris aegri
patitur mancre senstun.
corpus licet fatiscens
jaceat recline paullum,

Christum tamen sub ipso
meditabimur sopore.
PRUDENTIUS
Before Sleep
THE of day is ebbing,

toil
The quiet comes again.
In slumber deep relaxing
The limbs of tired men.
And minds with anguish shaken,

And spirits racked with grief,
The cup of all forgetting
Have drunk and found relief.
The Lethean waters

still
Now steal
through every vein,
And men no more remember
The meaning of their pain. . . ,
Let, let the weary body

Lie sunk in slumber deep.
The heart shall still remember
Christ in its very sleep.
43
PRUDENTIUS
Hymnus circa Exseyuias Dtfuncti
NUNC suscipe, terra, fovcndum,

grcmioquc hunc concipc molli.
hominis membra sequestra,
tibi
generosa et fragmina credo.

animae fuit haec domus olim,
factoris ab ore creatac;
fervens habitavit in istis
sapientia principe Christo.
tu dcpositum tege corpus;

non immemor ille requiret
sua muncra factor et auctor
propriique aenigmata vultus.
veniantmodo texnpora justa
cum spem Deus impleat omnem,
reddas patcfacta, neccsse est,
qualcm tibi trado figuram.
non si cariosa vetustas
dissolvent ossa favillis

fucritque cinisculus arens
mensura pugilli,
nee si vaga flamina et aurae

vacuum per inane volantes
tulerint cum pulvere nervos
hominem periisse licebit.
44
PRUDENTIUS
The Burial of the Dead
TAKE him, earth, for cherishing,

To thy tender breast receive him.
Body of a man I bring thee,
Noble even in its ruin.
Once was this a spirit's dwelling,

By the breath of God created.
High the heart that here was beating,
Christ the prince of all its living.
Guard him well, the dead I give thee,

Not unmindful of His creature
Shall He
ask it He who made
: it
Symbol of His mystery.

Comes the hour God hath appointed
To the hope of men,
fulfil
Then must thou, in very fashion,
What I give, return again.
Not though ancient time decaying
Wear away these bones to sand,
Ashes that a man might measure
In the hollow of his hand :
Not though wandering winds and idle,

Drifting through the empty sky,
Scatter dust -was nerve and sinew,
Is it given man to die.
45
patet ccce fidclibus ampli
via lucida iam paradisi.
licet et nemus illud adire
homini quod ademerat anguis.
illic, precor, optime ductor,

famulam tibi praecipc mentem,
genitali in scdc sacrari
quam liquerat cxsul ct errans.
nos tecta fovebimus ossa
violis et fronde firequenti
titulumque et frigida saxa

liquid o spargemus odore.
Once again the shining road
Leads to ample Paradise;
Open are the woods again
That the Serpent lost for men.
Take, O take him, mighty Leader,

Take again thy servant's soul,
To the house from which he "wandered
Exiled, erring, long ago.
But for us, hap earth about him,

Earth with leaves and violets strewn,
Grave his name, and pour the fragrant
Balm upon the icy stone.
47
BOETHIUS
QUAENAM discors foedera rerum
causa resoluit ? quis tanta dcus
veris statuit bella duobus,
ut quae carptim singula constent
eadexn nolint mixta iugari?
an discordia nulla est veris
semperque sibi ccrta cohaerent?

scd mens caecis obruta membris
nequit oppress! luminis igne
rerum tenues noscere nexus,
sed cur tanto fiagrat amore
veri tectas reperire notas?
scitne quod appctit anxia nosse?
sed quis nota scire laborat?
at si nescit, quid caeca petit?
quis enim quidquam nescius optet
aut quis valeat nescita sequi?
quove invcniat, quisve rcpertam
queat ignarus noscere formam?
an cum mentem cerneret altam
pariter summam et singula norat?
nunc membrorum condita nube
non in totum est oblita sui
summamque tenet singula perdens.

igitur quisquis vera requirit
BOETHIUS
THIS discord in the pact of things,
This endless war twixt truth and truth,
That singly hold, yet give the lie
To him who seeks to yoke them both
Do the gods know the reason why ?
Or is truth one without a flaw,
And all things to each other turn,
But the sunken in desire,
soul,
No longer can the links discern,
In glimmering of her smothered fire ?
Then why with travail does she yearn

To find the hidden mysteries?
Knows she the thing for which she burns?
Yet who will seek what he hath got?
Yet who will seek he knows not what?
How shall he follow the unknown?

How shall he find it, and when found
How shall he know it? Did the soul
Once see the universal mind,
And know the part, and know the whole?
Now sunken in the mirk of sense,

Not wholly doth the soul forget,
Still grasps the whole, lets go the part :
And therefore whoso seeks the truth

Shall find in no wise peace of heart.
49
neutro est habitu nam neque novit
:
nee pcnitus tamen omnia ncscit:

scd quam rctincns xnczninit summarn
consulit alte visa retractans,
ut servatis queat oblitas
addere partes.
50
For neither doth he wholly know,
And neither doth he all forget:
But that high thing which once he saw,
And still remembers, that he holds,
And seeks to bring the truth forgot
Again to that which he hath yet.
BOETHIUS
STUPET tergcminus novo
captus carmine ianitor,
quae sontes agitant mctu
ultriccs scelcrum deac
iam macstae lacrimis madent.
non ixionium caput
velox praecipitat rota,
et longa site perditus
spernit flumina Tantalus,
vultur dum satur est modis,
non trahit Tityi iecur.
tandem " vincimur *' arbiter
umbrarum miserans ait :
"
donamus comitem viro
emptam carmine coniugcm.
sed lex dona cocrceat,
ne, dum Tartara liquerit,
fas sit lumina flectere."
quis legem dat amantibus ?

maior lex amor est sibi.
heu noctis prope terminos
Orpheus Eurydiccn suam
vidit perdidit occidit.
vos haec fabula respicit
quicumque in superum diem
mentcm ducere quaeritis.
nam qui tartareum in specus
victuslumina flexerit,
quidquid praecipuum trahit
perdit, dum videt inferos.
BOETHIUS
CERBERUS at Hell's gate was still,
Dazed captive to an unknown song:
No longer plunged the turning wheel,
And Tantalus, athirst so long,
Heeded the streams no more : the three

Avenging goddesses of ill
Wept, sad at heart of melody
;
The very vulture drank his fill.

"
Yea, thou hast conquered," said the Lord
Of Shadows, " Take her, but be wise.
Thy song hath bought her, but on her
Turn not, this side of Hell, thine eyes."
Yet isnot Love his greater law?

And who for lovers shall decree?
On the sheer threshold of the night
Orpheus saw Eurydice.
Looked, and destroyed her. Ye who read,

Look up the gods in daylight dwell.
:
All that you hold of loveliness

Sinks from you, looking down at Hell.
BOETHIUS
Si vis celsi iura tonantis
pura sellers cernere mente,
aspice smnmi culmina caeli.
illic iusto foedere rcrum
vetcrcm servant sidera pacem,
non sol rutilo concitus igne
gelidum Phoebes impedit axem

nee quae summo vertice mundi
flcctit rapidos ursa meatus
numquam occiduo lota profundo

cetera cernens sidera mergi
cupit oceano tinguere flammas.
semper vicibus temporis aequis
Vesper seras nuntiat umbras
revehitque diem Lucifer almum.
sic aeternos rcficit cursus
alternus amor, sic astrigcris
bcllum discors cxulat oris.
54
BOETHIUS
IF the high counsels of the Lord of Thunder
Seekest thou to know with singleness of hearty
Look to the highest of the heights of heaven,
See where the stars still keep their ancient peace.
Never the kindled fiery sun
Hinders the gliding frozen moon,
Nor halts on his high way the Bear,
Nor in the west where waters are,
And where the other stars go down,
Seeks he his silver flames to drown.
With even alternate return
Still Vesper brings the evening on,
And Lucifer the tender dawn.
So Love still guides their deathless ways,
And ugly Hate that maketh wars
Is exiled from the shore of stars.
55
BOETHIUS
ITE nunc fortes ubi celsa magni
ducit exempli via. ctir inertes
terga nudatis? superata tellus
sidera donat.
BOETHIUS
O STRONG of heart, go where the road
Of ancient honour climbs.
Bow not your craven shoulders.
Earth conquered gives the stars.
57
VENANTIUS FORTUNATAS
Ad domnam Radigundem
TEMPORA si solito mihi Candida lilia fcrrent

aut speciosa foret suave rubore rosa,
haec ego rurc legens aut cacspite paupcris horti
misissem magnis munera parva libens.
sed quia prima mihi desunt, vel solvo sccunda :
profert qui vicias ferret amore rosas.

inter odoriferas tamen has quas misimus herbas
purpureae violae nobile gcrmen habent.
respirant pariter regali murice tinctae
et saturat foliis hinc odor, inde decor,
hae quod utrumque gerunt pariter habeatis utraque,
et sit mercis odor flore pcrenne decus.
VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS
To the Lady Radegimdt, with Violets
IF 'twere the time of lilies,

Or of the crimson rose,
I'd pluck them in the fields for you,
Or my poor garden close :
Small gift for you so rare.
But I can find no lilies,

Green herbs are all I bring.
Yet love makes vetches roses,
And in their shadowing
Hide violets as fair.
For royal is their purple,

And fragrant is their breath,
And to one sweet and royal,
Xheir fragrance witnesseth
Beauty abiding there.
59
MEDIAEVAL LATIN
Item ad eandem proflaribus transmissis
O REOINA potens, aururn cui et purpura vile cst,

floribus ex parvis te veneratur amans.
ct non res est, color est tamen ipsc per herbas
si :
purpura per violas, aurea forma crocus,

dives amore dei vitasti pracmia mundi :
contemnens has retinebis opes,

illas
suscipe missa tibi variorum munera florum,

ad quos te potius vita bcata vocat.
quae modo te crucias, recreanda in luce futura,
aspicis hinc qualis te retinebit ager.

per ramos fragiles quos nunc praebemus olentes
perpende hinc quantus te refovebit odor,
haec cui debentur precor ut, cum veneris illuc,
meque tuis mentis dextera blanda trahat.
quamvis te exspectet paradisi gratia florum,
vos cupiunt iam reviderc foris.
isti
ct licet egregio yidcantur odore placere,

plus ornant proprias te redeunte comas.
60
To the Lady Radegunde with a Bunch of Flowers
O QUEEN, that art so high

Purple and gold thou passcst by,
With these poor flowers thy lover worships thee.
Though all thy wealth thou hast flung far from thee,
Wilt thou not hold
The violet's purple and the crocus* gold?
Take this poor offering,

For it thy thoughts shall bring
To that blest light that is to dawn for thee,
Fields bright as these,
And richer fragrances.
And when thou comest there,

Hear, O my Saint, my prayer,
And may thy kind hand draw me after thee.
Yet, though thine eyes
Already look on flowers of Paradise,
These thine own

flowers
Would have thee out of doors.
Yea, though the flowers of Paradise are sweet,
These fain would lie
Where thou wert passing by.
61
Ad Rucconem diacanum, modo presbytenan
ALTARIS domini pollens, bone Rucco, minister,

hinc tibi festinus mando salutis opus,
nos maris Oceani tumidum circumfluit aequor,
te quoque Parisius, care sodalis, habet ;
Sequana te retinct, nos unda Britannica cingit :
unus amor,
divisis tcrris alligat
non furor hie pelagi vultum mihi subtrahit ilium
nee boreas aufert nomen, amice, tuum.
pectore sub nostro tarn saepe recurris amator,
tempore sub hiemis quam solet unda maris.
ut quatitur pelagus quotiens proflaverit curus,
stat neque sic animus te sine, care, meus.
Written on an island off the Breton coast
You at God's altar stand, His minister,

And Paris lies about you and the Seine :
Around this Breton isle the Ocean swells,

Deep water and one love between us twain.
Wild isthe wind, but still thy name is spoken ;
Rough is the sea it sweeps not o'er thy face.
:
Still runs my love for shelter to its dwelling,
Hither, O
heart, to thine abiding place
Swift as the waves beneathan east wind breaking

Dark as beneath a winter sky the sea,
So to my heart crowd memories awaking,
So dark, O love, my spirit without thee.
MEDIEVAL LAW LYRICS
MGoguim m m ngvttdmm
NECTAR vina cibus vestis doctrina facultas
muncribus largis
tu mihi, Gogo, sat es ;
tu refluus Cicero, tu noster Apicius extas,
hinc satias verbis, pascis et inde cibis,
sed modo da veniam ;

bubla turgente quiesco,
nam fit lis

uteri, ri caro mixta fremat.
hie ubi bos rccubat, fiigiet puto pullus et anser

cornibus et pinnis non furor aequus erit,
et modo iam somno languentia lumina claudo ;

nam dormirc meum carmina lenta probant.
To Gogot that he can eai no mort
NECTAR and wine and food and scholar's wit,

Such the fashion, Gogo, of thy house.
is
Cicero art thou, and Apicius too,

But now I cry you mercy no more goose
: !
Where the ox lieth, dare the chickens come?

Nay, horn and wing unequal warfare keep.
My eyes are closing and my lute is dumb,
Slower and slower go my songs to sleep.
MEDIMVAL LATIN LYRICS
Ad lovinum inlustrem ac patricium ft rectorem provincial
TEMPORA lapsa volant, fugitivis fallimur horis . . .
sic quoque ad fincm tendimus omnes,

dissimiles
nemo pedem retrahit quo sibi limes erit . . .
quid sunt arma viris ? cadit Hector et uitor Achilles,

Aiax, in clipeo mums Achaeus, obit . . .
forma venusta fluit, cecidit pulcherrimus Astur,

occubat Hippolytus nee superextat Adon.
quid, rogo, cantus agit ? modulis blanditus acutis
Orpheus et citharae vox animata iacet. . . .
quidve poema potest ? Maro Naso Menander Homerus,

quorum nuda tabo membra sepulchra tegunt?
cum venit extremum, neque Musis carmina prosunt,
nee iuvat eloquio detinuisse melos.
sic, dum puncta cadunt, fugiunt praesentia rerum,
et vitae tabulam tessera rapta levat. , . .
quod superest obitu mcritorum flore beato,

suavis iustorum fragrat odor tumulo.
66
TIME that is fallen is flying, we are fooled by the passing
hours . . .
Likeness is none between us, but we go to the selfsame end.

The foot that hath crossed that threshold shall no man with-
draw again.
. . . What help in the arms of the fighters? Hector, and
vengeful Achilles
Fallen, Ajax is fallen, whose shield was the wall of
Greece.
Beauty, beauty passeth, Astur the fairest is fallen,
Low Hippolytus lieth, Adonis liveth no more.
And where are the songs of the singers ? Silent for all their
sweetness.
Orpheus and the voice of the lute that he wakened are still.
Yea, but the poets, Virgil, Ovid, Menander and Homer?
Their naked bones are laid in the damps of the grave.
Come to the end, small aid is there in the songs of the Muses.
Small joy to be won in prolonging the notes of the song.
Even as the moments are dying, the present is flying,
The dice are snatched from our hands and the game is done.
Naught but the deeds of the just live on in a flower that is
blessed;
Sweetness comes from the grave where a good man lieth
dead.
67
ST. COLUMBA
Dies trot
REGIS regum rectissimi

propc cst dies domini,
dies irae et vindictae,
tenebrarum et nebulae,
diesque mirabiliurn
tonitruorum fortium,
dies quoque angustiae,
maeroris ac tristitiae,
inquo cessabit mulierum
amor et desiderium,
hominumquc contentio
mundi huius et cupido.
68
ST. COLUMBA
The Day of Wrath
DAY of the king most righteous,

The day is nigh at hand,
The day of wrath and vengeance,
And darkness on the land.
Day of thick clouds and voices,

Of mighty thundering,
A day of narrow anguish
And bitter sorrowing.
The love of women's over,

And ended is desire,
Men's strife with men is quiet,
And the world lusts no more.
MEDIMVAL LATW LTRICS
A SCHOLAR OF MALMESBURY
Carmen Aldhelmo Datum
ECCE, nocturno tcmpore,

orto brumali turbine
quaticns terrain tempestas
turbabat atque vastitas,
cum fracto vend federe
bacharentur in ae there
et rupto retinaculo
desevirent in sacculo. . . .
ac totidem torrentibus
sept em latet lampadibus
Pliadis pulchra copula
ab Athlantis prosapia . : . .
Zodiacus cum cetera

cyclus fuscatur caterva,
quern Mazaroth reperimus
nuncupari antiquitus,
bis senis cum sideribus
per Olimpum lucentibus ;
nee radiabat rutilus,

sicut solebat, Sirius,
quia nubis nigcrrima
abscondunt polos pallia,
attamcn flagrant fulmina
late per caeli culmina,
quando pallentem pendula
flammam vomunt fastigia,
70
A SCHOLAR OF MALMESBURY
To Aldhelm
STORM and destruction shattering

Strike fear upon the world,
The winds are out, and through high heaven
Their Bacchanals are hurled.
Their league is broken, burst the girth,
And launched their fury on the earth.
Torrent on torrent falls the rain,
Dark are the lovely Pleiades,
Their seven lamps are out, and dark
The Houses where abide the stars.
And Sirius shines no more at all,
And heaven is hung with blackest pall.
Yet through the summits of the sky
Flashes afar the livid levin,
And cataracts of pallid fire
Pour from the toppling crests of heaven.
Struggling with clouds the mountains stand,
The dark sea masses on the strand,
Following wave on wave behind
The rush and ruin of the wind.
quorum natura nubibus
procedit conlidentibus,
nee non marina cerula
glomerantur in glarca,
qua inruit inruptio
vcntorum ac corrcptio.
per pelagi itincra
salsa spumabant cquora,
cum bulliret brumalibus
undosus vortex fluctibus ;
Occanus cum motibus
atque diris dodrantibus
pulsabat promontoria
suffragantc victoria.
Along the pathways of the sea
The salt waves rise in foam.
The deep is boiling like a pot,
Dark water seething furiously,
And Ocean with his might of war
And thunder of his waves afar,
Storming the headlands, shock on shock,
And shouting victory.
73
COLMAN
Colmani Versus In Colmanum Perheriles Scottigena
Ficti Patrie Cupidum Et Rcmtanlem
DUM subito propcras dulccs inviscre terras

deseris et nostrae refugis consortia vitac,
festina citius, precibus nee flecteris ullis.
nee retinere valet bland e suggestio vocis ;
vincit amor
patriae quis flectere possit
: amantem ?
nee sic arguerim deiectae tedia mentis;
nam mihi preterite Christus si tempora vitae,
et prisco iterum renovaret ab ordine vires,
si mihi quae quondam fuerat floresceret aetas
et nostros subito faceret nigrescere canos,
forsitan et nostram temptarent talia mentem;
turn modo da veniam pigreque ignosce senectae,
quae nimium nostris obstat nunc aemula votis.
audi doctiloquo cecinit quod carmine vates:
omnia fert aetas, gelidus tardante senecta
sanguis hebet, frigent effete in corpore vires,
siccae nee calido complentur sanguine venae,
me maris anfractus lustranda et littora terrent
et tu rumpe moras celeri sulcare carina.
Colmanique tui semper, Colmane, memento:
iamiam nunc liceat fida te voce monere.
pauca tibi dicam vigili que mente teneto :
non te pompiferi delectet gloria mundi,

quae volucri vento vanoque simillima somno
labitur et vacuas fertur ecu fumus in auras,
74
COLMAN
Writtm by Caiman the Irishman to Colman returning to his own land
So, since your heart is set on those sweet fields

And you must leave me here,
Swift be your going, heed not any prayers,
Although the voice be dear.
Vanquished art thou by love of thine own land,

And who shall hinder love ?
Why should I blame thee for thy weariness,
And try thy heart to move?
Since, if but Christ would give me back the past,

And that first strength of days,
And this white head of mine were dark again,
I too might go your ways.
Do but indulge an idle fond old man

Whose years deny his heart.
The years take all away, the blood runs slow,
No leaping pulses start.
All those far seas and shores that must be crossed,

They terrify me :
yet
Go thou, my son, swift be thy cleaving prow,
And do not quite forget.
Hear me, my son little have I to say.

;
Let the world's pomp go by.

Swift is it as a wind, an idle dream,
Smoke in an empty sky.
75
urn urn
fluminis et valid! cursu fluit odor omni,
Vadc libens te cura rcmordet

patriae quoniam
nostrac unica vitae

omnipotens genitor spes
maris horrisonos fluctus

qui ventosque gubernat
del tibi none tutas undas,

crispantis gurgitis
tuae rector sit navis in undis,

ipse liquidis
nubiferi devectum flatibus aim

aequorc
reddat ad scottorum littora terrae,

opiate
tune valeas fame felix annos

multosque per
vivas vitae,
aegregiae capiens pracconia
hie nunc gaudia

ego praesentis temporis opto,
ut tibi vitae,
perpetuae contingant gaudia
Go to the land whose love gives thee no rest,
And may Almighty God,
Hope of our life, lord of the sounding sea,
Of winds and waters lord,
Give thee safe passage on the wrinkled sea,

Himself thy pilot stand,
Bring thee through mist and foam to thy desire,
Again to Irish land.
Live, and be famed and happy : all the praise

Of honoured life to thee.
Yea, all this world can give thee of delight,
And then eternity.
77
ALCUIN
Versus de Cuculo
HEU, cuculus nobis fuerat cantare suetus,

quae te nunc rapuit hora ncfanda tuis?
heu, cuculus, cuculus, qua te regione reliqui,
infelix nobis ilia dies fuerat.
omne genus hominum cuculum conplangat ubique,
perditus est cuculus, heu, perit ecce meus.
non pereat cuculus, veniet sub tempore veris,
et nobis veniens carmina laeta ciet.
quis scit, si veniat; timeo, est summersus in undis,

vorticibus raptus atque necatus aquis.
heu mihi, si cuculum Bachus dimersit in undis,
qui rapiet iuvenes vortice pestifero.
si
nidosque recurrat ad almos,
vivat, redeat,
nee corvus cuculum dissecet ungue fero.
heu quis te, cuculus, nido rapit ecce paterno?
heu, rapuit, rapuit, nescio si venias.
carmina si curas, cuculus, citus ecce venito,
ecce venito, precor, ecce venito citus.

non tardare, precor, cuculus, dum currere possis,
te Dafnis iuvenis optat habere tuus.
temp us adest veris, modo rumpc soporem,
cuculus
atque Menalca pater,
te cupit, en, senior
en tondent nostri librorum prata iuvenci,
solus abest cuculus, quis, rogo, pascit eum?
heu, male pascit eum Bachus, reor, impius ille,
qui sub cuncta cupit vertere corda mala.
ALCUIN
Lament for the Cuckoo
CUCKOO that sang to us and art fled,

Where'er thou wanderest, on whatever shore
Thou lingerest now, all men bewail thee dead,
They say our cuckoo will return no more.
Ah, let him come again, he must not die,
Let him return with the returning spring,

And waken all the songs he used to sing.
But will he come again? I know not, I.
1 fear the dark sea breaks above his head,

Caught in the whirlpool, dead beneath the waves.
Sorrow for me, if that ill god of wine
Hath drowned him deep where young things find their
graves.
But if he lives yet, surely he will come,
Back to the kindly nest, from the fierce crows.
Cuckoo, what took you from the nesting place ?
But will he come again? That no man knows.
If you love songs, cuckoo, then again, come

Come again, come
again, quick, pray you come.
Cuckoo, delay not, hasten thee home again,
Daphnis who loveth thee longs for his own.
Now spring is wake from thy sleeping,
here again,
Alcuin the old man
thinks long for thee.
Through the green meadows go the oxen grazing;
Only the cuckoo is not. Where is he?
79
MEDIAEVAL LATUf LTRICS
Plangitc nunc cueulum, cuculum nunc plangite cuncti,
ovans, flens redit ille, puto.
ille reccssit
opto tamcn, flentcm cuculum habeamus ut ilium,

ct nos plangamus cum cuculo pariter.
plange tuos casus lacrimis, puer inclite, plangc,

et casus plangunt viscera tota tuos.
si non dura silex genuit tc, plange, precamur,
te memorans ipsum plangere forte potes.

dulcis amor nati cogit deflcre parentem,
natus ab amplexu dum rapitur subito.
dum frater firatrem gennanum perdit amatum,
quid nisi idem faciat, semper et ipse fleat.
tres olim fuimus, iunxit quos spiritus unus,
vix duo nunc pariter, tertius ille iugit.
heu fugiet, fugict, planctus quapropter amarus
nunc nobis rcstat, cams abit cuculus.
carmina post ilium mittamus, carmina luctus,
carmina deducunt forte, reor, cuculum.
sis semper felix utinam, quocunque recedas,
sis memor et nostri,semper ubique vale.
80
Wail for the cuckoo, everywhere bewail him,
Joyous he left us shall he grieving come?

:
Let him come grieving, if he will but come again,

Yea, we shall weep with him, moan for his moan.
Unless a rock begat thee, thou wilt weep with us.
How canst thou not, thyself remembering?
Shall not the father weep the son he lost him,
Brother for brother still be sorrowing?
Once were we three, with but one heart among us.

Scarce are we two, now that the third is fled.
Fled is he, fled is he, but the grief remaineth ;
Bitter the weeping, for so dear a head.
Send a song after him, send a song of sorrow,
Songs bring the cuckoo home, or so they tell.
Yet be thou happy, wheresoe'er thou wanderest.
Sometimes remember us. Love, fare you well.
MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTR1CS
ALCUIN
Conftictus Peru et Hiimis
Conveniunt subito cuncti de montibus altis
pastores pecudum vernali luce sub umbra

arborea, pariter laetas celebrare Camenas.
adfuit et iuvenis Dafnis seniorque Palemon :
omnes hi cuculo laudes cantare parab ant,

ver quoque florigero succinctus stemmate venit,
frigida venit Hiems, rigidis hirsute capillis.

his certamen erat cuculi de carmine grande.
ver prior adlusit ternos modulamine versus.
Ver, Opto mcus veniat cuculus, carissimus ales,

omnibus iste solet fieri gratissimus hospes
in tectis, modulans rutilo bona carmina rostro.
Hiems. Turn glacialis Hiems respondit voce severa :

non veniat cuculus, nigris sed dormiat antris.
iste famem secum semp>er portare suescit.
Ver. Opto mcus veniat cuculus cum germine laeto,

frigora depellat, Phoebo comes almus in aevum,
Phoebus amat cuculum crescenti luce serena.
ALCUIN
The Strife between Winter and Spring
From the high mountains the shepherds came together,

Gathered in the spring light under branching trees,
Come to sing songs, Daphnis, old Palemon,
All making ready to sing the cuckoo's praises.
Thither came Spring, girdled with a garland,
Thither came Winter, with his shaggy hair.
Great strife between them on the cuckoo's singing.
Spring. would that he were here,

I
Cuckoo !
Of all winged things most dear,

To every roof the most beloved guest.
Bright-billed, good songs he sings.
Winter. Let him not come,

Cuckoo !
Stay on in the dark cavern where he sleeps,

For Hunger is the company he brings.
Spring. Iwould that he were here,

Cuckoo !
Gay buds come with him, and the frost is gone,

Cuckoo, the age-long comrade of the sun.
The days are longer and the light serene.
MEDIEVAL LATIN WRICS
Hiems. Non vcniat cuculus, general quia forte labores,
proelia congeminat, requiem disiungit amatam,

omnia disturbat; pelagi tcrraeque laborant.
Ver. Quid tu, tarda Hiems, cuculo convitia cantas?
qui torpore gravi tenebrosis tectus in antris

post epulas Veneris, post stulti pocula Bacchi.
Hiems. Sunt mihi divitiae, sunt et convivia laeta,

est rcquies dulcis, calidus est ignis in aede.
haec cuculus ncscit, scd perfidus ille laborat.
Ver. Ore ferat flores cuculus, et mella ministrat,
aedificatque domus, placidas et navigat undas,

et generat soboles, laetos ct vestiet agros.
Hiems. Haec inimica mihi sunt, quae tibi laeta videntur.

sed placet optatas gazas numerare per areas
et gaudere cibis simul et requiescere semper.
Ver. Quis tibi, tarda Hiems, semper dormire parata,

divitias cumulat, gazas vel congregat ullas,
si vcr vel aestas ante tibi nulla laborant?
Hiems. Vera refers illi, quoniam mihi multa laborant,

:
sunt etiam servi nostra ditionc subacti.

iam mihi servantes domino, quaccumque laborant
Ver. Non illis dominus, sed pauper inopsque superbus.

nee te iam poteris per te tu pascerc tantum
ni tibi qui veniet cuculus alimonia praestat.
Winter. Let him not come,
Cuckoo!
For comes with him and he wakens wars,
toil
Breaks blessed quiet and disturbs the world,
And sea and earth alike sets travailing.
Spring. And what are you that throw your blame on him ?
That huddle sluggish in your half-lit caves
After your feasts of Venus, bouts of Bacchus ?
Winter. Riches are mine and joy of revelling,

And sweet is sleep, the fire on the hearth stone.
Nothing of these he knows, and does his treasons.
Spring. Nay, but he brings the flowers in his bright bill,

And he brings honey, nests are built for him.
The sea is quiet for his journeying,
Young ones begotten, and the fields are green.
Winter. I like not these things which are joy to you.

I like to count the gold heaped in my chests;
And feast, and then to sleep, and then to sleep.
Spring. And who, thou slug-a-bed, got thee thy wealth?

And who would pile thee any wealth at all,
If spring and summer did not toil for thee?
Winter. Thou speakest truth; indeed they toil for me.

They are my slaves, and under my dominion.
As servants for their lord, they sweat for me.
Spring. No lord, but poor and beggarly and proud.

Thou couldst not feed thyself a single day
But for his charity who comes, who comes!
Cuckoo!
85
PdUmon. Tune respondit ovans sublimi e sed* PaUmon
et Dafnis pariter, pastorwn et torba
piorum :
"
Desine plura, Hiems rcriim tu prodigus, atrox.
:
et veniat cuculus, pastorum dulcis amicus,

collibus in nostris erumpant gcrmina laeta,
pascua sint pecori, requies et dulcis in arvis.
et virides rami pracstent umbracula fessis,
uberibus plcnis veniantque ad mulctra capcllae,
et volucres varia Phoebum sub voce salutent.
quapropter citius cuculus nunc ecce venito!

tuiam dulcis amor, cunctis gratissimus hospes.
omnia te expectant, pelagus tcllusque polusque.
"
salve, dulce decus, cuculus per saecula salve!
Then old PaUmon spake from kis high seat,
And Daphnis, and the crowd offaithful shepherds.
" Have
done, have done, Winter, spendthrift and foul,
And let the shepherd's friend, the cuckoo, come.
And may the happy buds break on our hills,
Green be our grazing, peace in the ploughed fields,
Green branches give their shadow to tired men,
The goats come to the milking, udders full,
The birds call to the sun, each one his note.
Wherefore, O cuckoo, come, O cuckoo, come !
For thou art Love himself, the dearest guest,

And all things wait thee, sea and earth and sky.
All hail, beloved :
through all ages, hail !
ALCUIN
De Luscinia
QUAE te dextra mihi rapuit, luscinia, niseis,

ilia meae fuerat invida laetitiae.
tu mea dulcisonis implesti pectora musis,
atque animum moestum carmine mcllifluo.
qua propter veniant volucrum simul undiquc coctus
carmine te mecum plangere Pierio.
spreta colorc tamen fueras non spreta canendo.
lata sub angusto gutture vox sonuit,
dulce melos itcrans vario modulamine Musae,
atque creatorcm semper in ore canens.
nusquam cessavit ab odis,
noctibus in furvis
vox vencranda sacris, o decus atque decor,
quid mirum, cherubim, seraphim si voce tonantem
perpctua laudcnt, dum tua sic potuit?
ALCUIN
Written for his lost nightingale
WHOEVER stole you from that bush of broom,

I think he envied me my happiness,
O little nightingale, for many a time
You lightened my sad heart from its distress,
And flooded my whole soul with melody.
And I would have the other birds all come,
And sing along with me thy threnody.
So brown and dim that little body was.

But none could scorn thy singing. In that throat
That tiny throat, what depth of harmony,
And all night long ringing thy changing note.
What marvel if the cherubim in heaven
Continually do praise Him, when to thee,
O small and happy, such a grace was given?
MEDIAEVAL LATW LTR1CS
ALCUIN
Sequentia de Sancto Michaels,
quam Alcuinus cotnposuit Karolo imperatori
SUMMI regis archangele

Michahel,
intende, quaesumus, nostris
vocibus.
Te namque profitemur esse

supernorum principern civium.
tc deum gcneri humano
orantc diriguntur angcli,
Nc lacdcrc inimici,
quantum cupiunt, versuti
fessos unquam mortales praevaleant.
idem tencs perpctui
potentiam paradisi,
semper te sancti honorant angeli.
In templo tu dei
turibulum aureum
visus es habuisse manibus.
inde scandens vapor
aromate plurimo
pervcnit ante conspectum dei.
Tu crudelem cum draconem forti manu straveras,

faucibus illius animas eruisti plurimas.
hinc maximum agebatur in caelo silentium,
"
millia millium et dicunt salus regi domino."
ALCUIN
A Sequence for St. Michael,
which Alcuin wrote for the Emperor Charles
MICHAEL, Archangel
Of the King of Kings,
Give ear to our voices.
We acknowledge thee to be the Prince of the citizens of

heaven :
And at thy prayer God sends

His angels unto men,
That the enemy with cunning craft shall not prevail

To do the hurt he craves
To weary men.
Yea, thou hast the dominion of perpetual Paradise,
And ever do the holy angels honour thee.
Thou wcrt seen in the Temple of God,

A censer of gold in thy hands,
And the smoke of it fragrant with spices
Rose up till it came before God.
Thou with strong hand didst smite the cruel dragon,

And many souls didst rescue from his jaws.
Then was there a great silence in heaven,
And a thousand thousand saying " Glory to the Lord
King."
MEDIJEVAL LATIN LTRICS
Audi nos, Michahel,
angelc summe,
hue parum descende
de poll scdc,
opcm domini
nobis ferendo
Icvamcn atque indulgentiae.
Tu nostros, Gabrihcl,
hostes prostcrne,
tu, Raphael, aegris
afiermedclam,
morbos absterge, noxas minue,
nosque fac interessc gaudiis
bcatomm.
Has tibi symphonias plectrat sophus, induperator.

Hear us, Michael,
Greatest angel,
Gome down a little
From thy high seat,
To bring us the strength of God,
And the lightening of His mercy.
And do thou, Gabriel,

Lay low our foes,
And thou, Raphael,
Heal our sick,
Purge our disease, ease thou our pain,
And give us to share
In the joys of the blessed.
Emperor, thy scholar made these melodies for thee.
93
ALCUIN
Epitaphium
Hie, rogo, pauxillum veniens subsiste, viator,

ct mca scrutare pcctore dicta tuo,
ut tua deque meis agnoscas fata figuris :
vertitur o species, ut mea, sicque tua.

quod nunc es fucram, famosus in orbc, viator.
etquod nunc ego sum, tuque futurus eris.
mundi casso sectabar amore,
delicias
nunc cinis et pulvis, vermibus atque cibus.
quapropter potius animam curare memento,
quam carnem, quoniam haec manet, ilia pent,
cur tibi rura paras? quam parvo cernis in antro
me tenet hie requies sic tua parva
: fiet,
cur Tyrio corpus inhias vestirier ostro

quod mox esuriens pulvere vermis edet?
ut flores pereunt vento veniente minaci,
sic tua namque, caro, gloria tota perit.
tu mihi redde vicem, lector, rogo, carminis huius
"
et die: da veniam, Christe, tuo famulo."
obsecro, nulla manus violet pia iura sepulcri,
pcrsonet angelica donee ab arce tuba:

"
qui iaces in tumulo, terrae de pulvere surge,
magnus adest iudex milibus innumeris."
Alchuine nomen
erat sophiam mihi semper amanti,
pro quo funde prcces mente, legens titulum.
Hie requiescit beatae memoriae domnus Alchuinus abba,

qui obiit in pace xrv. kal. lunias. quando legeritis, o vos
"
omnes, orate pro eo et dicite, Requiem aeternam done!
ei dominus." Amen.
94
ALCUIN
His Epitaph
HERE halt, I pray you, make a little stay,

wayfarer, to read what I have writ,
And know by my fate what thy fate shall be.
What thou art
now, wayfarer, world-renowned,
1 was : what am
now, so shall thou be.
I
The world's delight I followed with a heart
Unsatisfied ashes am I, and dust.
:
Wherefore bethink thec rather of thy soul

Than of thy flesh ; this dieth, that abides.
Dost thou make wide thy fields? in this small house
Peace holds me now no greater house for thee.
:
Wouldst have thy body clothed in royal red?

The worm is
hungry for that body's meat.
Even as the flowers die in a cruel wind,
Even so, O flesh, shall perish all thy pride.
Now in thy turn, wayfarer, for this song

That I have made for thee, I pray you, say :
"
Lord Christ, have mercy on Thy servant here,"
And may no hand disturb this sepulchre,
Until the trumpet rings from heaven's height,
"
O
thou that liest in the dust, arise,
The Judge of the unnumbered hosts is here " !
Alcuin was my name learning I loved. :
O thou that readcst this, pray for my soul.
Here lieth the Lord Abbot Alcuin of blessed memory ',

who died
in peace on the nineteenth
of May. And when ye have read this,
do ye " Lord give him
all pray for him and say, May the eternal
rest." Amen.
95
MEDIMVAL LATIJf LTRICS
FREDUGIS
dUaAlcumi
O MEA cella, mihi habitatio dulcis, amata,

semper in aeternum, o mea cella, vale,
undique te cingit ramis resonantibus arbos,
silvula florigcris semper onusta comis.
prata salutiferis florebunt omnia et herbis,
quas medici quaerit dextra salutis ope.
flumina te cingunt fiorentibus undique ripis,
retia piscator qua sua tendit ovans.
pomiferis redolent ramis tua claustra per hortos,

lilia cum rosulis Candida mixta rubris.
omne genus volucrum matutinas personal odas,

atque creatorem laudat in ore deum.
in te personuit quondam vox alma magistri,
quae sacro sophiae tradidit ore libros.
in te temporibus certis laus sancta tonantis
pacificis sonuit vocibus atque animis.
te,mea cella, modo lacrimosis plango camcnis,
atque gemens casus pectore plango tuos.
tu subito quoniam fugisti carmina vatum,
atque ignota manus te modo tota tenet,
te modo nee Flaccus nee vatis Homerus habebit,
nee pueri musas per tua tecta canunt.
vertitur omne dccus secli sic namquc repente
omnia mutantur ordinibus variis.
MEDUEVAL LATIN LTRICS
FREDUGIS
Lament for Alcuin
O LITTLE house, O dear and sweet my dwelling,

O little house, for ever fare thee well !
The trees stand round thee with their sighing branches,

A little flowering wood for ever fair,
A field in flower where one can gather herbs
To cure the sick ;
Small streams about thee, all their banks in flower,
And there the happy fisher spreads his nets.
And all thy cloisters smell of apple orchards,
And there are lilies white and small red roses,
And every bird sings in the early morning,

Praising the God who made him in his singing.
And once the Master's kind voice sounded in thee,
Reading the books of old philosophy,
And at set times the holy hymn ascended
From hearts and voices both alike at peace.
O little house, my song is broke with weeping,
And sorrow is upon me for your end.

Silent the poets' songs, stilled in a moment,
And thou art passed beneath a stranger's hand.
No more shall Angilbert or Alcuin come,
Or the boys sing their songs beneath thy roof.
So passes all the beauty of the earth.
97
nilmanct aeternum, nihil immutabile vere est.
obscurat sacrum nox tcncbrosa diem,
decutit et flores subito hicms frigida pulcros,
perturbat placidum et tristior aura mare,
quae campis cervos agitabat sacra iuventus
incumbit fessus nunc baculo senior,
nos miseri, cur te fugitivum, mundus, amamus?
tu fugis a nobis semper ubique ruens.
tu fugiens fugias, Christum nos semper amemus,
semper amor teneat pectora nostra dei.
ille pius famulos diro defendat ab hoste
ad caelum rapiens pectora nostra, suos.
pectorc quern pariter toto laudernus, amemus.
nostra est ille pius gloria, vita, salus.
Nothing remains in one immortal stay,
Bright day is darkened by the shadowy night,
Gay buds arc stricken by the sudden cold.
A sadder wind vexes the quiet sea,
And golden youth that once would course the stag
Is stooped above his stick, a tired old man.
O flying world! That we, sick-hearted, love thee!
Still thou escapest, here, there, everywhere,
Slipping down from us. Fly then if thou wilt

Our hearts are set hi the strong love of God.
And may His lovingkindness keep His men
From the dread enemy, and lift their hearts
To Him, our life, our glory, our salvation.
99
MED1JEVAL LATUf LTRICS
MS. OF MONTE CASSINO

Ad Ptadum Diaconum
HZNG celer egrcdicns facili, mca carta, volatu

per silvas, colJes, valles quoque prepete cursu
alma dec cari Benedict! tecta require.
Est nam certa quies fessis venientibus illuc,
hie olus hospitibus, piscis hie, panis abundans;
pax pia, mens humilis, pulcra et concordia fratrum,
laus, amor et cultus Christi simul omnibus horis.
zoo
MS. OF MONTE GASSING

Written to Paul the Deacon at Monte Cassino
ACROSS the hills and through the valley's shade,

Alone the small script goes,
Seeking for Benedict's beloved roof,
Where waits its sure repose.
They come and find, the tired travellers,
Green herbs and ample bread,
Quiet and brothers' love and humbleness,
Christ's peace on every head.
101
ANGILBERT
Versus de Bella quaefuit acta Fontaneto
AURORA cum prime mane tetram noctem dividit,

Sabbatum non illud fuit, sed Saturni
dolium,
dc fraterna rupta pace gaudet demon impius.
Bella clarnat, hinc et inde pugna gravis oritur,

frater fratri mortem
parat, nepoti avunculus;
films nee patri suo exhibet quod meruit.
Caedes nulla peior fuit campo nee in Marcio ;

fracta cst lex christianorum sanguinis proluvio,
unde manus inferorum, gaudet gula Cerberi.
Dextera prepotens dei protexit Hlotharium,

victorille manu sua pugnavitque fortiter:
cetcri si sic pugnassent, mox foret concordia.
Ecce olim velut ludas salvatorem tradidit,

sic te, rex, tuique duces tradiderunt gladio ;
esto cautus, ne frauderis agnus lupo previo.
Fontaneto fontem dicunt, villam quoque rustici,

ubi strages et ruina Francorum de sanguine ;
orrent campi, orrent silvae, orrcnt ipse paludes.
Gramcn illud ros et ymber nee humectat pluvia,

in quo fortes ceciderunt, proelio doctissimi,
pater, mater, soror, frater, quos amici fleverant,
202
ANGILBERT
On the Battle which was fought at Fontenoy
WHEN the dawn at early morning drove the sullen night away,
Treachery of Saturn was it, not the holy sabbath day.
Over peace of brothers broken joys the Fiend in devilry.
Cry of war is here and yonder, fierce the fighting that
outbroke,
Brother brings to death his brother, this man slays his
sister's son,
Son against his father fighting, ancient kindnesses fordone.
Never was there wilder slaughter, never in the field of Mars,

Law of Christ is broken, broken, Christian blood is shed
like rain,
And the throat of Cerberus belling maketh glad the hosts
of hell.
Strong the hand of God outstretching overshadowed King

Lothair,
Victory came to him fighting with his own arm mightily.
Had all men fought in his fashion, peace had soon returned
there.
Look you, even as once Judas was a traitor to his Lord,

So, O King, thy princes gave thee in betrayal to the sword.
O beware, beware the treason !
Lamb, the wolf is in the fold !
Fontenoy they call it, once a springing well

and little farm,
There where now is blood and slaughter and the ruin of the
Franks,
Shuddering the fields and copses, shuddering the very
swamp.
On that grass be dew nor shower, nor the freshening of rain,
Where the bravest, battle-wisest bowed themselves and fell
down slain:
Father, mother, sister, brother, friend for friend have wept
in vain.
103
Hoc autem scclus peractum, quod descripsi ritmice,
Angilbertus, ego vidi pugnansque cum aliis,
solus de multis rcmansi prima frontis acic.
Ima vallis retrospexi, vcrticemquc iugeri

ubi suos inimicos rex Hlotharius
fortis
expugnabat fugientes usque forum rivuli.
Karoli de parte vero, Hludovici pariter

albent campi vestimentis mortuorum lineis,
velut solent in autumno albescere avibus.
Laude pugna non est digna, nee canatur melodc,
Oriens, meridianus, Occidens et Aquilo,

plangant illos qui fuerunt illic casu mortui.
Maledicta dies ilia, nee in anni circulo
numeretur, sed radatur ab omni memoria,

iubar soils illi dcsit, aurora crepusculo.
Noxque ilia, nox amara, noxque dura minium,

inqua fortes ccciderunt, proelio doctissimi,
pater, mater, soror, frater, quos amici fleverant.
O luctum atque lamentum nudati sunt mortui.

!
horum carnes vultur, corvus, lupus vorant acriter ;

orrent, carent scpulturis, vanum iacet cadaver.
Ploratum et ululatum nee desoribo amplius :

unusquisque quantum potest restringatque lacrimas \
pro illorum anknabus depreccmur dominum.
104
MEDIEVAL LATIN LrRICS
Yea, I Angilbertus saw it,the whole deed of horror done,
I that make a rhyme upon it, there was fighting with the rest,
And alone am left surviving of that foremost battle line.
I looked back upon the valley and the summit of the hill,
When Lothair, strong king and valiant, scattered them
before his sword,
Drove them flying on before him to the crossing of the ford.
Yea, but whether they were men of Charles or men of

Louis there,
Now the fields are bleached to whiteness with the white
shrouds of the slain,
Even as they bleach in autumn with the coming of the gulls.
Be no glory of that battle, never let that fight be sung,
From his rising in the morning to the setting of the sun,
South and North, bewail them who in that ill chance to
death were done.
Cursed be the day that saw it, in the circuit of the year
Count it not, let it be razed from the memory of men,
Never shine the sun upon it, nor its twilight break in dawn.
And that night, a night of anguish, night too bitter and too
hard.
Night that saw them fallen in battle, fallen the wise and
high of heart :
Father, mother, sister, brother, friend for friend have wept

in vain.
O the grief and the bewailing there they lie, the naked dead,
!
On their bodies wolves and crows and vultures ravin and

are fed,
There they lie, unburied horror, idle corpses that were men.
On that grief and that bewailing make I now no further

stay:
To each man his sorrow, let him master it as best he may,
And on ail their souls have mercy, God the Lord, let all
men pray.
H 105
HRABANUS MAURUS
Ad Eigilum de libro quern scripserat
NULXUM opus cxsurgit quod non annosa vetustas

expugnet, quod non vertat iniqua dies,
grammata sola carent fato, mortemque repellunt.
preterita renovant grammata sola biblis.
grammata nempe del digitus sulcabat in apta
rupe, suo legem cum dederat populo.
sunt, fuerant, mundo venient quae forte futura,
grammata haec monstrant famine cuncta suo.
1 06
HRABANUS MAURUS
To Eigilus, on the book that ht had written
No work of men's hands but the weary years

Besiege and take it, conies its evil day :
The written word alone flouts destiny,
Revives the past and gives the lie to Death.
God's finger made its furrows in the rock
In letters, when He gave His folk the law.
And things that are, and have been, and may be,
Their secret with the written word abides.
107
HRABANUS MAURUS
Dulcissimo Fratri ac Revermtissimo Abbati Gnmoldo
VIVE, meac vires lassarumque anchora rcmm,

naufragio ct litus tutaque terra meo,
solus honor nobis, urbs tu fidissima semper
curisque afflicto tuta quics animo,
sintque licet montes inter cum fluctibus arva
mens tecum est nulla quae cohibetur humo,
te mea mens sequitur, sequitur quoque carmen amoris,
cxoptans animo prospera cuncta tuo.
qui mihi te notum dedit et concessit amicum
conservet sanum Christus ubique mihi.
ante solum terrae caelique volubile cyclum
praetereant, vester quam quoque cessct amor,
hocque, pater, monui, moneo te iterumque monebo,
sis memor ipse mei, sicut et ipse tui,
ut deus in terris quos hie coniunxit amicos,

gaudentes pariter iungat in arce poli.
IOS
HRABANUS MAURUS
To Grimold, Abbot of St. Gall
THEN live, my strength, anchor of weary ships,

Safe shore and land at last, thou, for my wreck,
My honour, thou, and my abiding rest,
My city safe for a bewildered heart.
What though the plains and mountains and the sea
Between us are, that which no earth can hold
Still follows thce, and love's own singing follows,
Longing that all things may be well with thee.
Christ who first gave thee for a friend to me,
Christ keep thee well, where'er thou art, for me.
Earth's self shall go and the swift wheel of heaven
Perish and pass, before our love shall cease.
Do but remember me, as I do thee,
And God, who brought us on this earth together,
Bring us together in His house of heaven.
109
WALAFRID STRABO
Insula Felix
MUSA, nostrum, plange, soror, dolorcm,

pande de nostro miserum reccssum
heu solo, quern continue pudenda
pressit egestas.
Nam miser pectus sapiens habere

quaero, quam ob causam patriam relinquo
et mails tactus variis perosus
plango colonus . . .
Frigus invadit grave nuditatem,

non calent palmae, pedibus retracta
stat cutis, vultus hiemem pavescit
valde severam.
In domo frigus patior nivale,

non iuvat cerni gelidum cubile.
nee foris lectove calens repertam
prendo quietem.
Si tamen nostram veneranda mentem
possidens prudentia continerct
parte vel parva ingenii calore
:
tutior essem.
Heu pater, si solus adesse possis,

quem sequens terrac petii remota,
credo nil laesisse tui misellum
pectus alumni.
no
WALAFRID STRABO
Written from Fulda to his old master at Reichenau
my Muse, weep thou for me I pray.

SISTER,
Wretchedam I that ever went away
From my own land, and am continually
Ashamed and poor.
Fool that I was, a scholar I would be,
For learning's sake I left my own country,
No luck have I and no man cares for me,
Exiled and strange.
"Tis bitter frost I am poorly happed,

and
I cannot warm my hands, my feet are chapped,
My very face shudders when I go out
To brave the cold.
Even in the house it is as cold as snow,
My frozen bed's no pleasure to me now,
I'm never warm enough in it to go
To quiet sleep.
Ithink perhaps if I had any sense,

Even a little smattering pretence
Of wisdom, I could put up some defence,
Warmed by my wits.
Alas, my father, if thou wert but here,

At whose behest thy scholar came so far,
I think there is no hurt that could come near
His foolish heart.
in
MEDIEVAL LATIJi LTRfCS
Ecce pronunpunt lacrimae, recorder,
quam bona dudum firucrcr quiete,
cum daret felix mihimet pusillum
Augia tectum.
Sancta sis semper nimiumque cara

mater, ex sanctis cuneis dicata,
laude, profectu, meritis, honore,
insula felix.
Nunc item sanctam liceat vocari

qua dei matris colitur patenter
cultus, ut laeti mcrito sonemus,
insula felix.
Tu licet cingaris aquis profundis,

estamen firmissima caritate,
quae sacra in cunctos documenta spargis,
insula felix.
Te quidem semper cupiens videre,

per dies noctesque tui recorder,
cuncta quae nobis bona ferre gestis,
insula felix
Donet hoc Christi pietas tonantis,

ut locis gaudere tuis reductus
ordiar, dicens: vale, gloriosa
mater, in aevum . . .
Da, precor, vitae spatium, redemptor,

donee optatos patriae regressus
in sinus, Christi celebrare laudis
munera possim.
XI2
Now start the sudden tears, remembering
How quiet it was there, the fostering
Of those low roofs that gave me sheltering
At Reichenau.
O mother of thy sons, beloved, benign,

Thy saints have made thee holy, and the shrine
Of God's own Mother in thy midst doth shine,
O happy isle.
What though deep waters round about thee are,

Most strong in love stand thy foundations sure,
And holy learning thou hast scattered far,
O happy isle.
Still cries my heart that blessed place to see,

By day, by night, do I remember thee,
And ail the kindness in thy heart for me,
O happy isle.
Christ in His mercy give to me this grace,

That I may come back to that happy place,
And stand again and bless thee face to face,
O mother isle.
Let O
me not die, Christ, but live so long
To see again the land for which I yearn ;
Back to her heart to win at last return,
And praise Thee there.
WALAFRID STRABO
Commendatio Opusculi De Culture Hortorum
HAEC tibi scrvitii rnunuscula vilia parvi

Strabo tuus, Grimalde pater doctissimc, servus
j>ectore devoto nullius ponderis offert,
ut cum consepto vilis consederis horti
subter opacatas frondenti vcrtice malos,
persicus imparibus crincs ubi dividit umbris,
dum tibi cana legunt tenera lanugine poma
ludentes pueri, scola laetabunda tuorurn,
atquc volis Lngentia mala capacibus indunt,
grand i a conantes includere corpora pal mis :
quo moneare habeas nostri, pater alme, laboris,

dum relegis quae dedo volens, interque legendum
ut vitiosa seces, deposco, placentia firmes.
te deus aeterna facial virtute virentem
inmarcescibilis palmam comprendere vitae:
hoc pater, hoc natus, hoc spiritus annual almus.
WALAFRID STRABO
To " "
Grimold, Abbot of St. Gall, with his book Of Gardening
A VERY paltry gift, of no account,
My father, for a scholar like to thee,
But Strabo sends it to thee with his heart.
So might you sit in the small garden close
In the green darkness of the apple trees
Just where the peach tree casts its broken shade,
And they would gather you the shining fruit
With the soft down upon it; all your boys,
Your little laughing boys, your happy school,
And bring huge apples clasped in their two hands.
Something the book may have of use to thee.
Read it, my father, prune it of its faults,
And strengthen with thy praise what pleases thee.
And may God give thee in thy hands the green
Unwithering palm of everlasting life.
115
WALAFRID STRABO
Ad amicwn
CUM splendor lunae fulgescat ab aethere purae,
tu sta sub divo cernens specularnine miro,
qualiter ex luna splcndescat lampade pura
et splendore suo caros amplectitur uno
corpore divisos, scd mentis amorc ligatos.
si facies faciem spectarc ncquivit amantem,
hoc saltern nobis lumen sit pignus amoris.
hos tibi versiculos fidus transmisit axnicus ;
si de parte tua fidei stat fixa catena,

nunc precor, ut valeas felix per saecula cuncta.
116
WALAFRID STRABO
To his friend in absence
WHEN the moon's splendour shines in naked heaven,

Stand thou and gaze beneath the open sky.
See how that radiance from her lamp is riven,
And in one splendour foldeth gloriously
Two that have loved, and now divided far,
Bound by love's bond, in heart together are.
What though thy lover's eyes in vain desire thee,

Seek for love's face, and find that face denied ?
Let that light be between us for a token ;
Take thispoor verse that love and faith inscribe.

Love, art thou true ? and fast love's chain about thee ?
Then for all time, Olove, God give thee joy !
SEDULIUS SCOTTUS
Carmen Paschale
SURREXTT Ghristus sol verus vespere noctis,

surgit et hinc domini mystica mcssis agri.
nunc vaga puniceis apium plcbs laeta labore
floribus instrepitans poblite mella legit,
nunc variae volucres permulcent aethera cantu,
temperat et pernox nunc philomela melos.
nunc chorus ecclesiae can tat per cantica Sion,
alleluia suis centuplicatque tonis.
Tado, pater patriae, caelestis gaudia paschae
percipias meritis limina lucis : ave.
xx8
SEDULIUS SGOTTUS
Easter Sunday
LAST night did Christ the Sun rise from the dark,
The mystic harvest of the fields of God,
And now the little wandering tribes of bees
Are brawling in the scarlet flowers abroad.
The winds are soft with birdsong; all night long
Darkling the nightingale her descant told,
And now inside church doors the happy folk
The Alleluia chant a hundredfold.
O father of thy folk, be thine by right
The Easter joy, the threshold of the light.
MEDIMVAL LATUf LTRICS
SEDULIUS SCOTTUS
Ad Hartgarium
NUNC viridant segetes, mine florent germine campi,
nunc turgcnt vites, est nunc pulcherrimus annus,
nunc pictae volucrcs permulcent ethera cantu,
nunc mare, nunc tellus, nunc cell sidcra ridcnt.
At non tristificis perturbat potio sucis,

cum medus atque Ceres, cum Bacchi munera desint,
hcu quam multipliers dcfit substantia carnis,
quam mitis tellus gcncrat, quam roscidus ether.
Scriptor sum (fateor), sum musicus alter et Orpheus,

sum bos triturans, prospera quaeque volo.
sum vester miles sophie preditus armis;
pro nobis nostrum, Musa, rogato patrem.
iao
MEDIAEVAL LATUt LTRICS
SEDULIUS SCOTTUS
He complains to Bishop Hartgar of thirst
THE standing corn is green, the wild in flower,

The vines are swelling, 'tis the sweet o' the year,
Bright-winged the birds, and heaven shrill with song,
And laughing sea and earth and every star.
But with it all, there's never a drink for me,
No
wine, nor mead, nor even a drop of beer.
Ah, how hath failed that substance manifold,
Born of the kind earth and the dewy air !
I am a writer, I, a musician, Orpheus the second,

And the ox that treads out the corn, and your well-
wisher I,
I am your champion armed with the weapons of wisdom
and logic,
Muse, tell my lord bishop and father his servant is dry.
121
SEDULIUS SCOTTUS
Apologia pro vita sua
Aur lego vcl scribo, docco scrutorvc sophiam :
obsecro celsithronuzn nocte dicquc meum.

vescor, poto libcns, rithmizans invoco Musas,
dormisco stertens : oro dcum vigilans.
conscia mens scclcruxn dcflct peccamina vitac ;
parcitc vos misero, Christc Maria, viro.
122
SEDULIUS SCOTTUS
Written as scholasticus at Liege
I READ or write, I teach or wonder what is truth,

I call upon my God by night and day.
I eat and freely drink, I make my rhymes,
And snoring sleep, or vigil keep and pray.
And very ware of all my shames I am ;
O Mary, Christ, have mercy on your man.

MEDIJEVAL LATIN LYRICS
SEDULIUS SGOTTUS
Contra Plagam
LIBERA plcbcm tibi servientem,

ira mitescat tua, sancte rector,
lacrimas clemens gemitusque amaros
respice, Christe.
Tu pater noster dominusque celsus,

nos tui scrvi sumus, alme pastor,
frontibus nostris rose! cruoris
signa gerentes.
Infero tristi tibi quis fatetur?

mortui laudes tibi num sacrabunt?
ferreae virgae, metuende iudcx,
parce, rogamus.
Non propinetur populo tuoque

nunc calix irae, meriti furoris :
clareant priscae miserationes

quaesumus, audi.
Deleas nostrum facinus, precamur,

nosque conserva, bencdicte princeps,
mentiurn furvas supera tenebras,
lux pia mundi.
Sancte sanctorum, dominusque regum,

visitetplebcm tua sancta dextra,
nos tuo vultu videas serenus,
ne pereamus.
124
SEDULIUS SCOTTUS
Intercession against the Plague
SET free Thy people, set free Thy servants,

Lighten Thine anger, Ruler most holy;
Look on their anguish, bitter their weeping,
Christ, in Thy mercy.
Thou art our Father, Master exalted,

We Thy servants, Thou the Good Shepherd,
are
Bearing Thy token of blood and of crimson
Marked on our foreheads.
Deep in Thy hell who then shall confess Thee?

Yea, shall the dead give praise to Thy name?
Judge of our dread, Thy rod is of iron,
Spare us, we pray Thee.
Bring not so near to Thy people, Thy servants,

The cup of Thine anger, Thy merited wrath :
Lighten upon us Thine ancient compassion.

We cry. Do Thou hear!
Loosen, we pray Thee, our load of transgression.
Vouchsafe to keep us, Prince ever blessed.
Vanquish the shadow that darkens our spirits,
Light of the world.
Saint of and king of all kingships,

all saints
Visit Thy people with Thy right hand.
Lift up the light of Thy countenance upon us,
Lord, or we perish.
MEDIMVAL LATlJf LTRICS
NINTH CENTURY MS. OF VERONA

Andecavis Abbas
ANDEGAVIS abas cssc dicitur

ille nomen primi tenet hominum ;
hunc fatentur vinum vellet bibcre

super omnes Andechavis homines.
Eia eia eia laudes
Eia laudes dicamus Libero.
Iste malet vinum omne tempo re

quern nee dies nox nee ulla preterit
quod non vino saturatus titubet,
velut arbor agitata fiatibus.
Eia eia eia laudes
Iste gerit corpus imputribiie

vinum totum conditum ut alove
et ut mire corium conficitur
cutis eius nunc cum vino tingitur.
Eia eia eia laudes
Eia lauda dicamus Libero.
Iste cupa non curat de calicem

vinum bonum bibere suaviter,
scd patcllis atque magnis cacabis
et in cis ultra modum grandibus.
Eia eia eia laudes
126
NINTH CENTURY MS. OF VERONA

Th* Abbot Adam of Angers
ONCE there was an Abbot of Angers.

And the name of the first man did he bear.
And they say he had a mighty thirst
Even beyond the townsmen of Angers.
Ho and ho and ho and ho !
Glory be to Bacchus !
He would have his wine all times and seasons

Never did a day or night go by,
But it found him wine-soaked and wavering
Even as a tree that the high winds sway
Ho and ho and ho and ho !
As to body was he incorruptible.

Like a wine that's spiced with bitter aloes.
And as hides are dressed and tanned with myrrh,
So was his skin deep-tanned with wine.
Ho and ho and ho and ho I
Glory bfto Bacchus !
Nor did he like elegantly drinking

From a wine cup filled from the barrel.
Naught would do him but mighty pots and pannikins.

Pots and pans still greater than their species.
Glory b* to Bacchus !
1*1
Hunc pexperdet Andcchavis civitas,
nullum talcm ultra sibi social,
qui sic semper vinuxn possit sorbere ;
cuius facta, cives, vobis pingite !
Eia eta eia laudes

Eta laudes dicamus Libero.
Should it hap that the town of Angers lost him,
Never would it see his like again
Never see his like for steady drinking.
Mark him well, ye townsmen of Angers.
RADBOD
"
ANNO ab incarnatione domini DGCGC apparuit in caelo
mirabile signum. stelle enim vise sunt undique tamcn ex
alto in orizontis ima profluere, circa policardinem omnes
fere inter se concurrere. quod prodigium secute sunt
tristes rerum kalamitates aeris videlicet maxima intem-
:
peries crebrique ventorum turbines, fluminum quoque

terminos suos transgredientium tcrribilis quedam quasi
Kataclismi imago et (quod his pestilentius est) dire homi-
num adversus deum se extollentium tempestates. hoc
codem anno, priusquam epacte mutarentur, Folko Re-
morurn metropolitanus et Zvendiboldus rex interfecti sunt,
ac non multis antea diebus ego peccator Radbodus inter
famulos sancte Traiectensis ecclesie conscribi merui;
atque o utinam cum eisdem eterne vite consortium merear
adipisci. hoc ergo erit epitaphium meum:
aesuries te, Christe deus, sitis atque videndi
iam modo carnalcs me vetat esse dapes.
da modo te vcsci, tc potum haurire salutis;
unicus ignote tu cybus csto vie.
et quern longa fames errantem ambesit in orbe,
nunc satia vultu, patris imago, tuo."
130
RADBOD
" IN the
year of the Incarnation of our Lord 900 there
appeared a marvellous sign in heaven. For the stars were
seen to flow from the very height of heaven to the lowest
horizon, wellnigh as though they crashed one upon the
other. And upon this marvel followed woeful calamities,
such as a most notable untowardness of the seasons and
frequent tempests, rivers also overflowing their banks as
in dread likeness of the Deluge and (what was yet more
pestilent than these) ominous upheavals of men boasting
themselves against God. In this same year, ere the inter-
calary days were ended, Fulk the archbishop of Rheims
and the king Zvendibold were slain, and not many days
before, I, Radbod the sinner, was judged worthy to be
enrolled among the servants of the holy church of Utrecht :
and O would that I be found worthy of that same company

in the life eternal. This then shall be my epitaph :
Hunger and thirst, O Christ, for sight of Thee,

Came between me and all the feasts of earth.
Give Thou Thyself the Bread, Thyself the Wine,
Thou, sole provision for the unknown way.
Long hunger wasted the world wanderer,

With sight of Thee may he be satisfied."
13*
RADBOD
De Hirmdvu
FLORIFERAS auras ct frondea tempora capto

tumquc per humanas hospitor ipsa domos
atque ibi spectandum cunctis confingo cubilc,
segnis inersque xnanus quale patrarc nequit.
in quo ziata mihi praedulcia pignora servo
donee me valeant per spatia ampla sequi.
hunc mihi iungo grcgem, et volucres mox explico pcnnas,
impigra sic totam duco volando diem,
nee tamen id frustra dum quippe per ardua trano,
;
anident dcnsis aethera laeta satis,

at,cum limosas pennb contingo paludes,
turn pluvia et vcntis, ^Eole, tundis agros.
RADBOD
The Swallow
I TAKE the winds flower-bringing,

I take the time of leaves,
And tarry in men's houses,
Building beneath the eaves
My nest where all can see it;

And there I keep my young,
My brood so sweet and little,
Until their time is come.
Out in the empty spaces

They follow me away,
Swift are my wings and tireless
All the long summer day.
And up in those high places

My flight is not in vain,
For kindly laughs the joyous sun

On fields of standing grain.
But when in the dank marshes

I dip a flying wing,
Then through the fields comes flailing
The east wind harsh with rain.
133
sole dehinc gelido cum ninguida bruma propinquat
seu patria pcllor seu fugio ipsa mca.
nee dulces nidos nee hospita limina curans,
sed propriae sortis indita iura sequens.
sic rigidas auras ignotis vito sub antris,
sic quoque naturae do paradigma tenax.
heus homo, dum causas rerum miraris opertas,
ne spernas decoris munera quaeso tui.
tu ratione vigcs ego sum rationis egena :
tu post fata manes fata ego tota sequor.

his quantum superas, tantum me vince creantis
imperio parens, iussit ut ipse creans.
Colder the sun, and winter,
Bitter with snow at hand.
Out-driven or out-flying,
I leave my fatherland.
Sweet and kindly threshold,

nests
Unheeding leave behind,
And my own fate I follow,
Far from the frozen wind.
Beneath strange roofs I shelter.

O man, wilt thou not see?
I follow fate why wilt thou
:
Lag after destiny?
135
EUGENIUS VULGARIUS
Mttrum Parhemiaewn Tragicwn
O TRISTIA secla priora,

quc vos docuere sepulcra
animisque parando nociva
belli fabricare pcricla?
Heu quis prior ille piator

qui cusor in artc fabrina
variavit in igne figuras,
cudens gladii male formas?
Quis deniquc Martia primus

arcus volucresque sagittas
ignivit et edidit iras,
mortes stabilivit amaras?
Qui spicula cudit in usus,

conflavit in incude funus ;
lamne tenuavit et ictus,
ventris vacuarct ut haustus.
Docuit quoque cuspide mortem

qui duxit in online martcm ;
amiserat et quia mcntem
umbre tcnuere tumentem.
EUGENIUS VULGARIUS
Written c. 900
O SORROWFUL and ancient days,
Where learned ye to make sepulchres?
Who taught you all the evil ways
Wherein to wound men's souls in wars?
Woe to that sacrificial priest,

First craftsman of the blacksmith's forge,
Who saw strange shapes within his fire,
And hammered out illgotten swords.
Whoever fashioned first the bow,

And flight of arrows, swift, secure,
Launched anger on the air and made
The bitterness of death more sure.
Who tempered spearheads for their work,

He breathed upon the anvil death ;
He hammered out the slender blade,

And from the body crushed the breath.
He gave to death a thrusting spear,

Who first drew up his battle-hosts.
Long since hath fared his vaunting soul
To dwell a ghost amid the ghosts.
137
TENTH CENTURY MS.

Alba
PHOEBI claro nondum orto iubare,

fcrt Aurora lumen terris tcnue :
*
spiculator pigris clamat surgite.'
Ualba part umet mar atra sol
Pay pasa bigil mira clar tenebras.
En incautos hostium insidie

torpentesquc gliscunt intercipcrc
quos suadet preco clamans surgere.
Pay pasa bigil mira clar tenebras.
Ab Arcturo disgregatur aquilo

poli sues condunt astra radios,
orient! tenditur sep ten trio.
Poy pasa bigil mira clar tenebras.
TENTH CENTURY MS.

Aubade
HYPERION'S clear star is not yet risen,

Dawn brings a tenuous light across the earth,
The watcher to the sleeper cries, " Arise! "
Dawn over the dark sea brings on the sun ;
She leans across the hilltop : see, the light I
Behold the ambush of the enemy

Stealing to take the heedless in their sleep,
" "
And still the herald's voice that cries Arise !

She leans across the hilltop : see, the light !
The North wind from Arcturus now blows free,

The stars go into hiding in the sky,
And nearer to the sunrise swings the Plough.
She leans across the hilltop : see, the light !
139
MS. OF ST. MARTIAL OF LIMOGES

De Sancto Michatlt
PLEBS angelica,
phalanx ct archangelica
principans turraa, virtus
Uranica,
ac potestas
alrniphona.
Dominantia
nurnina divinaque
subsellia, Cherubim
actherea
ac Seraphim
ignicoma,
Vos, O Michael
caeli satrapa,
Gabrielque vera
dans verba nuntia,
Atque Raphael,
vitae vernula,
transferte nos inter
Paradisicolas.
140
MS. OF ST. MARTIAL OF LIMOGES

For St. Michael
ANGELIC host,
Phalanx and squadron of the Prince-Archangels,
Uranian power,
Strength of the gracious word,
Spirits thathave dominion, Cherubim,

Divine tribunal of the air,
And Seraphim with flaming hair,
And you, O Michael, Prince of heaven,

And Gabriel, by whom the word was given,
And Raphael, born in the house of Life,

Bring us among the folk of Paradise.
VESTIUNT SILVE
VESTTUNT silve tcnera merorem
virgulta, suis onerata pomis,
canunt de celsis sedibus palumbes
carmina cunctis.
Hie turtur genait, rcsonat hie turdus,

pangit hie priscus merularum sonus;
passer nee taccns, arridens garritu
alte sub ulmis.
Hie Icta canit philomela frondis

longas effundit sibilum per auras
sollernpne, milvus tremulaque voce
aethera pulsat.
Ad astra volans aquila > in auris

alauda canit, modulis resoluit,
dcsursum vergit dissimili modo,
dum terram tangit.
Vclox impulit rugitus hirundo,
clangit coturnix, gracula fringultit;
aves sic cunctc celebrant estivum
undique carmen.
Nulla inter aves similis est api,

que talem gerit tipum castitatis
nisi Maria, que Christum portavit alvo
inviolata.
14*
MSS. OF CANTERBURY AND VERONA

THE sadness of the wood is bright
With young green sprays, the apple trees
Are laden, in their nests high overhead
Wood pigeons croon.
The doves make moan, deep throated sings the thrush,

The blackbirds flute their ancient melody ;
The sparrow twitters, making his small jests

High underneath the elm.
The nightingale sings happy in the leaves,

Pouring out on the winds far carrying
Her solemn melody the sudden hawk
:
Quavers in the high air.
The eagle takes his flight against the sun ;
High overhead the lark trills in the sky,

Down dropping from her height and changing note,
She touches earth.
Swift darting swallows utter their low cry ;
The jackdaw jargons, and clear cries the quail ;
And so in every spot some bird is singing

A summer song.
Yet none among the birds is like the bee,
Who the very type of chastity,
is
Save she who bore the burden that was Christ

In her inviolate womb.
143
IAM, DULCIS AMIGA

Ttnth Century
IAM, dulcis arnica, venito,

qiiam sicut cor rneum diligo ;
Intra in cubiculum mcum,

omamentis cunctis onustum.
Ibi stint sedilia strata

ct domus velis ornata,
Floresque in domo sparguntur
hcrbcque fragrantes miscentur.
Est ibi mensa apposita

universis cibis onusta :
Ibi ciarum vinum abundat
et quidquid te, cara, dclcctat.
Ibi sonant dulces symphonic

inflantur et altius tibic;
Ibi puer et docta puella
pangunt tibi carrnina bella :
Hie cum pleetro citharam tangit,

iliamclos cum lira pangit;
Portantque xninistri pateras
pigmentatis poculis plenas.
144
MSS. OF SALZBURG, CANTERBURY AND

LIMOGES
GOME, sweetheart, come,
Dear as my heart to me,
Gome to the room
I have made fine for thee.
Here there be couches spread,

Tapestry tented,
Flowers for thee to tread,
Green herbs sweet scented.
Here is the table spread,

Love, to invite thee,
Clear is the wine and red,
Love, to delight thee.
Sweet sounds the viol,

Shriller the flute,
A lad and a maiden
Sing to the lute.
He'll touch the harp for thee,

She'll sing the air,
They will bring wine for thee,
Choice wine and rare.
J45
Non me iuvat tantum convivium
quantum post dulce colloquium,
Ncc rerum tantarum ubertas
ut dilecta familiaritas.
Iain nunc veni, soror electa

etpre cunctis mihi dilecta,
Lux mee clara pupille
parsque maior anime mee.
Ego fui sola in silva

et dilexi loca secreta :
Frequenter effugi tumultum

et vitavi populum multum.
lam nix glaciesque liquescit,

Folium et herba virescit,
Philomena iam cantat in alto,
Ardet amor cordis in antro.
Karissima, noli tardare;

studeamus nos nunc amare,
Sine te non potero vivere;
iam decet amorcm perficcrc.
Quid iuvat deferrc, electa,

que sunt tamen post facienda?
Fac cita quod eris factura,
in me non est aliqua mora.
14*
Yet for this care not I,
*Xis what comes after,
Not all this lavishness,
But thy dear laughter.
Mistress mine, come to me,
Dearest of all,
Light of mine eyes to me,
Half of my soul.
Alone in"* the wood

I have loved hidden places,
Fled from the tumult,
And crowding of faces.
Now the snow's melting,
Out the leaves start,
The nightingale's singing,
Love's in the heart.
Dearest, delay~not,
Ours love to learn,
I livenot without thee,
Love's hour is come.
What boots delay, Love,

Since love must be?
Make no more stay, Love,
I wait for thee.
147
HERIGER
HERIGER, urbis
Maguntiensis
antistes, qucndam
vidit prophetam
qui ad infernum
se dixit rap turn.
Inde cum multas

rcferret causas,
subiunxit totum
esseinfernum
accinctum dcnsis
undique silvis.
Hcrigcr illi
ridens respondit ;
**
meum subulcum
illuc ad pastum
volo cum macris
mittcre porcis."
HERIGER, BISHOP OF MAINZ

HERIOER,
Bishop of
Mainz, sa\v a
Prophet \vho
Said he had
Been carried
Off down to
Hell.
He among
Other and
Divers things
Mentioned that
Hell is sur-
rounded by
Very thick
Woods.
Then the good

Bishop made
Smilingly
" I
Answer:
Think I shall
Send to that
Pasture my
Swineherd and
Bid him take
With him my
Very lean
Pigs."
149
MEDIAEVAL JLATIJf LTRICS
Vir ait falsus :
**
fui translator
in templum cell
Christumque vidi
letum sedentem
et comcdcntcm.
loanncs baptista
erat pincerna
atque preclari
pKxrula vini
p>orrexit cunctis
vocatis sanctis.**
Herigcr ait
**
:
prudentcr cgit
Christuslohanncm
ponens pincemam,
quoniarn vinuxxi
non bibit unquam.
150
The liar said :
" was to
I
Heaven trans*
-lated and
Saw Christ there
Sitting and
Joyfully
Eating.
44
John called the
Baptist was
Cupbearer,
Handing round
Goblets of
Excellent
Wine to the
Saints. '*
The Bishop c*
Said, Wisely
Did Christ choose
The Baptist
To be his
Cupbearer,
Because he
Is known not
To drink any
Wine.
MEDIAEVAL LATlJf LTRICS
Tvlcndax probaris
cum Petrum dicis
illic magistrum
essc cocomm.
est quia summi
ianitor cell.
Honore quali
tc dcus cell
habuit ibi?
ubi sedisti ?
volo ut narres
quid manducasses."
Respondit homo :
**
angulo uno
partem pulmonis
furabar cocis :
hoc manducavi
atque recessi."
" But
you arc
A liar to
Say that St.
Peter is
Head of the
Cooks,when he
Keeps Heaven's
Gate.
" But tell me,

What honour
Did God set
Upon you?
Where did you
Sit? And on
What did you
Sup?"
He answered :
" I sat in
A corner
And munched at
A piece of a
Lung that I
Stole from the
Cooks."
153
MEDIAEVAL LATHf LttUCS
Heriger ilium
iussit ad palum
loria ligari
scopisque cedi,
sermone dtiro
hunc arguendo :
**
Si te ad suuxa
invitet pas turn
Christus, lit sccum
capias cibum
cave nc fiirtum
facias [spxircum].
Heriger
Had him trussed
Up to a
Pillar and
Beaten with
Broom-sticks, the
While he ad-
-dresscd him with
Words that were
Harsh.
"If Christ to
His Table
Hereafter
Invites you,
Do not be
In future
So dirty a
Thief."
155
LEVIS EXSURGIT ZEPHYRUS

LEVIS cxsurgit Zcphyrus,
ct sol proccdit tcpidus ;
iam terra sinus aperit,
dulcore suo difHuit.
Ver purpuratum cxiit,

ornatus suos induit:
aspergit terram floribus,
ligna silvarum frondibus.
Struunt lustra quadrupcdcs,

et dulces nidos volucres;
inter ligna florentia
sua decantant gaudia.
Quod oculis dum video

et auribus dum audio,
heu, pro tantis gaudiis
tantis inflor suspiriis.
Cum mihi sola sedeo

et hcc revolvens palleo,
si forte caput sublevo,
nee audio nee video.
Tu saltim, Veris gratia,

exaudi et considera
frondes, flores ct gramina ;
nam mea languet anima.
156
MEDIAEVAL LATIJi LTRICS
MS. OF ST. AUGUSTINE AT CANTERBURY

SOFTLY the west wind blows ;
Gaily the warm sun goes;

The earth her bosom sheweth,
And with all sweetness floweth.
Goes forth the scarlet spring,

Clad with all blossoming,
Sprinkles the fields with flowers,
Leaves on the forest
Dens for four-footed things,

Sweet nests for all with wings.
On every blossomed bough
Joy ringeth now.
I see it with my eyes,

I hear itwith my ears,
But in my heart are sighs,
And I am full of tears.
Alone with thought I sit,
And blench, remembering it ;
Sometimes I lift my head,

I neither hear nor see.
Do thou, O Spring most fair,

Squander thy care
On flower and leaf and grain.
Leave me alone with pain !
157
SIGEBERT OF GEMBLOUX
Vtrginalis sancta frequtntia
HINC virginalis sancta frequcntia,

Gcrtrudis, Agnes, Prisca, Cecilia,
Lucia, Petronilla, Tecla,
Agatha, Barbara, Juliana,
Multeque quarum nomina non lego,

aut lecta nunc his adderc negligo,
dignas Deo quas fecit esse
integritas anime fidcsque . . .
He pervagantes prata recentia

pro vclle qucrunt serta dcccntia,
rosas legentes passionis
lilia vel violas amoris.
The Virgin Martyrs
THEREFORE come they, the crowding maidens,

Gertrude, Agnes, Prisca, Cecily,
Lucy, Thekla, Juliana,
Barbara, Agatha, Petroncl.
And other maids whose names I have read not,

Names I have read and now record not,
But their soul and their faith were maimed not,
Worthy now of God's company.
Wandering through the fresh fields go they,

Gathering flowers to make them a nosegay,
Gathering roses red for the Passion,
Lilies and violets for love.
159
Passio Sanctorum Thebeonan
CONATUS roscas Thcbcis ferrc coronas . . .
lilia nulla mihi, viole null^, rosa nulla,

lilia munditi^ rosa camis mortificand^,
nee per pallorem viol^ testantur amorcm
quo pia sponsa calet, quo sponsus mutuo languet
nescio luteola vaccinia pingcrc caltha,
non cum narcisso mihi smnma papavera carpo,
hie flores desunt inscripti nomina regum.
Quod solurn potui studio ludente socordi

alba ligustra mihi iazn sponte cadentia Icgi,
pollicc nee pucri dignata nee ungue puell^,
inde rudi textu, non coniuncto bene textu
conserui parvas has qualcscunquc coronas,
vos, O
Thcbei, gratissima nomina regi,
votis posco piis, h^c serta locarc velitis
inter victrices lauros edcrasque virentes.
si rude vilet opus, si rcrum futile pondus,
at non vilescat > pia quod devotio praestat.
160
The Martyrdom of the Theban Legion
I TRIED to make a garland for the saints. . . .
No lily for violet or rose,

me,
Lilies for purity, roses for passion denied,
Nor violets wan, to show with what pure fire
The bride for the bridegroom burns.
I cannot gild my berries marigold.
Proud poppies and narcissus not for me,
Nor flowers written with the names of kings.
All that this blockhead zeal of mine could find
Was privet blossom, falling as I touched it,
That never boy or girl would stoop to gather,
And of it, badly woven, ill contrived,
I twisted these poor crowns.
Will you but deign to wear them,
Hide neath the victor's laurel this poor wreath-
Clumsy the work, a silly weight to carry,
And yet revile it not, for it is love.
161
PETER ABELARD
Sabbato ad Vesperas
O QUANTA qualia
sunt ilia sabbata,
quac semper celebrat
superna curia,
quae fessis requies,
quac mcrccs fortibus,
cum exit oznnia
dcus in omnibus.
Vera Jerusalem
est ilia civitas
cuius pax iugis est,
summaiucunditas :
ubi non praevenit

rem desiderium,
nee desiderio
minus est praemium.
Rex, quae curia,
qualc palatium,
quae pax, quae requies,
quod illud gaudium,
huius participles
exponant gloriae,
si quantum sentiunt
possint exprimere.
162
PETER ABELARD
Vespers :
Saturday evening
How mighty are the Sabbaths,

How
mighty and how deep,
That the high courts of heaven
To everlasting keep.
What peace unto the weary,
What pride unto the strong,
When God in Whom are all things
Shall be all things to men.
Jerusalem the city

is
Of everlasting
peace,
A peace that is surpassing
And utter blessedness;
Where finds the dreamer waking
Truth beyond dreaming far,
Nor there the heart's possessing
Less than the heart's desire.
But of the courts of heaven

AndfHim3who is the King,
The rest and the refreshing,
The joy that is therein,
Let those that know it answer
Who in that bliss have part,
If any word can utter
The fullness of the heart.
163
Nostrum cst interim
mentem crigcre
ct totis patriam
votis appcterc,
et ad Jerusalem
a Babylonia
post longa regredi
tandem exsilia.
Illic, molestiis
finitis omnibus,
securi cantica
Sion cantabimus,
et iuges gratias
de donis gratiae
beata referet
plebs tibi, Domine.
Illic ex Sabbato
succedit Sabbatum,
perpes lactitia
sabbatizantium,
nee ineffabilis
cessabunt iubili,
quos decantabimus
et nos et angeli.
Pcrcnni Domino
pexpes sit gloria,
ex quo sunt, per quern sunt,
in quo sunt omnia.
ex quo sunt, Pater est,
per quern sunt, Filius,
in quo sunt, Patris et
filii Spiritus.
But ours, with minds uplifted
Unto the heights of God,
With our whole heart's desiring,
To take the homeward road,
And the long exile over,
Captive in Babylon,
Again unto Jerusalem,
To win at last return.
There, all vexation ended,

And from all grieving free,
We sing the song of Zion
In deep security.
And everlasting praises
For all Thy gifts of grace
Rise from Thy happy people,
Lord of our blessedness.
There Sabbath unto Sabbath

Succeeds eternally,
The joy that has no ending
Of souls in holiday.
And never shall the rapture
Beyond all mortal ken
Depart the eternal chorus
That angels sing with men.
Now to the King Eternal

Be praise eternally,
From whom are all things, by whom
And in whom all things be.
From Whom, as from the Father,
By Whom, as by the Son,
In Whom, as in the Spirit,
God the Lord, Three in One.
165
MEDUEVAL LATUf LTRIGS
PETER ABELARD
In Parascwt Domini : III. Nocturno
SOLUS ad victimam procedis, Domine,

morti tc offcrcns quam venis tollere :
quid nos miserrimi possumus dicere
qui quae commisimus scimus te lucre ?
Nostra sunt, Domine, nostra sunt crimina :
quid tua criminum facis supplicia?

quibus sic compati fac nostra pcctora,
ut vcl compassio digna sit venia.
Nox praesensquc triduum

ista flcbilis
quod dcmorabitur flctus sit vesperum,

donee laetitiac mane gratissimum
surgente Domino sit macstis redditurn.
Tu tibi compati sic fac nos, Domine,

tuae participes ut simus gloriac ;
sic pracscns triduum in luctu duccre,
ut risum tribuas paschalis gratiae.
166
PETER ABELARD
Good Friday : the Third Nocturn
ALONE to sacrifice Thou goest, Lord,

Giving Thyself to death whom Thou wilt slay.
For us Thy wretched folk is any word,
Whose sins have brought Thee to this agony ?
For they are ours, O Lord, our deeds, our deeds.

Why must Thou suffer torture for our sin ?
Let our hearts suffer for Thy passion, Lord,
That very suffering may Thy mercy win.
This is that night of tears, the three days* space,

Sorrow abiding of the eventide,
Until the day break with the risen Christ,
And hearts that sorrowed shall be satisfied.
So may our hearts share in Thine anguish, Lord,

That they may sharers of Thy glory be :
Heavy with weeping may the three days pass,

To win the laughter of Thine Easter Day.
167
PETER ABELARD
Platictus
VEL confbssus pariter

morercr fcliciter
cum, quid amor facial,
maius hoc non habeat,
ct me post te viverc
rnori sit assidue,
nee ad vitam anima
satis sit dimidia.
Vicem amicitiac
vel unam me reddcre
oportebat temporc
sumtnac tune angustiae,
triumph! participem
vel ruinae comitem,
ut te vel eriperem
vel tecum occumberem,
vitam pro te finiens
quam salvasti totiens,
ut et mors nos iungeret
magis quam disiungerct.
Do quietem fidibus :
vellem, ut et planctibus
sic possem et fletibus :
laesispulsu manibus
raucis planctu vocibus
deficit et spiritus.
168
MEDIEVAL LATW LTRICS
PETER ABELARD
David's Lament for Jonathan
Low in thy grave with thee

Happy to lie,
Since there's no greater thing left Love to do ;
And to live after thee

Is but to die,
For with but half a soul what can Life do ?
So share thy victory,

Or else
thy grave,
Either to rescue thee, or with thee lie :
Ending" that life for thee,

That thou didst save,
So Death that sundereth might bring more nigh.
Peace, O my stricken lute !
Thy strings are sleeping.

Would that my heart could still
Its bitter weeping !
169
MEDIAEVAL LATlJf JLTRICS
THE ARCHPOET
Conftssio
ESTUANS intrinsecus
ira vehementi
in amaritudine
loquar mee^ menti :
factus dc znateria
levis elcrnenti
similis sum folio
de quo ludent ventL
Cum sit enim proprium

viro sapicnti
supra petram poncre
sedem fundamenti,
stultus ego comparor
fluvio labcnti,
sub eodem acre
nunquam perxoanenti.
Feror ego veluti

sine nauta navis,
ut per vias aeris
vaga fertur avis,
non me tenent vincula,
non me tenet clavis,
qu^ro mihi similes,
et adiungor pravis.
170
THE ARCHPOET
His Confession
SEETHING over inwardly

With fierce indignation,
In my bitterness of soul,
Hear my declaration.
I am of one element,
Levity my matter,
Like enough a withered leaf
For the winds to scatter.
Since it is the property

Of the sapient
To sit firm upon a rock,
It evident
is
That I am a fool, since I
Ama flowing river,
Never under the same sky,
Transient for ever.
Hither, thither, masterless

Ship upon the sea,
Wandering through the ways of air,
Go the birds like me.
Bound am I by ne'er a bond,
Prisoner to no key,
Questing go I for my kind,
Find depravity.
171
Mihi cordis gravitas
res videtur gravis ;
iocus est amabilis
dulciorque favis;
quicquid Venus imperat
labor est suavis,
qu numquam in cordibus
habitat ignavis.
Via lata gradior

more iuventutis,
implico me vitiis
inmemor virtu tis,
voluptatis avidus
magis quarn salutis,
mortuus in anima
curam gero cutis.
Pr^sul discretissime,
veniam te precor :
morte bona morior,

dulci nece necor,
meum pectus sauciat
puellarum decor,
et quas tactu nequeo,
saltern corde mqchor.
172
Never yet could I endure
Soberness and sadness,
Jests I love and sweeter than
Honey find I gladness.
Whatsoever Venus bids
Is a joy excelling,
Never in an evil heart
Did she make her dwelling.
Down the broad way do I go,

Young and unregretting,
"Wrap me in my vices up,
Virtue all forgetting,
Greedier for all delight
Than heaven to enter in :
Since the soul in me is dead,

Better save the skin.
Pardon, pray you, good my lord,

Master of discretion,
But this death I die is sweet,
Most delicious poison.
Wounded to the quick am I
By a young girl's beauty :
She's beyond my touching? Well,

Can't the mind do duty?
173
MEDIAEVAL. LATIN LTRICS
Res cst arduissirna
vincere naturam,
in aspectu virginis
rnentem esse purarn ;
iuvenes non posstimxis
legem sequi duram,
leviumquc corporum
non habere curam.
Qiiis in igne positus

igne non uratur?
Quis Papi^ demorans
castus habcatur,
ubi Venus digito
iuvencs venatur,
oculis illaqueat,
facie prqdatur?
Si ponas Yp>oliturn
hodie Papie,
non erit Ypolitus
in sequent! die :
Veneris in thalamos
ducnnt omnes vie,
non est in tot turribus
turris Aricie.
174
Hard beyond all hardness, this
Mastering of Nature :
Who shall say his heart is clean,

Near so fair a creature?
Young are we, so hard a law,
How should we obey it?
And our bodies, they are young,
Shall they have no say in't?
Sit you down amid the fire,

Will the fire not burn you?
Xo Pavia come, will you
Just as chaste return you?
Pavia, where Beauty draws
Youth with finger-tips,
Youth entangled in her eyes,
Ravished with her lips.
Let you bring Hippolytus,

In Pavia dine him,
Never more Hippolytus
Will the morning find him.
In Pavia not a road
But leads to venery,
Nor among its crowding towers
One to chastity.
175
Secundo redarguor
ctiam de ludo.
Sed cum ludus corpore
me dimittat nudo,
frigidus cxterius
mentis estu sudo,
tune versus et carmina
meliora cudo.
Tertio capitulo
memoro tabernam.
IIlam nullo tempore
sprevi, neque spernam,
donee sanctos angelos
venientes cernam,
cantantes pro mortuis
**
Requiem eternam."
IVlcum est propositum
in taberna mori,
ut sint vina proxima
morientis ori;
tune eantabunt letius
angelorum chori :
" E>eus sit
propitius
huie potatori."
176
Yet a second charge they bring:
I'm for ever gaining.
Yea, the dice hath many a time
Stripped me to my shaming.
What an the body's cold,
if
If the mind is burning,
On the anvil hammering,
Rhymes and verses turning ?
Look again upon your list.
Is the tavern on it?
Yea, and never have I scorned,
Never shall I scorn it,
Till the holy angels come,
And my eyes discern them,
Singing for the dying soul,
Requiem aeternam.
For onthis my heart is set :
When the hour is nigh me,

Let me in the tavern die,
With a tankard by me,
While the angels looking down
Joyously sing o'er me,
Deus sit propitius
ffuic potatori.
177
Poculis accenditur
anixni luccrna,
cor inbutum ncctarc
volat ad superna ;
mihi sapit dulcius
vinum de tabema,
quam quod aqua miscuit
presulis pincema.
Loca vitant publica
quid am poetarum,
et secretas eligunt
sedes latebrarum,
student, instant, vigilant,
nee laborant parum,
et vixtandem reddere
possunt opus clarum.
leiunant et abstinent
poetarum chori,
vitant rixas publicas
et tumultus fori,
et,ut opus faciant
quod non possit mori,
moriuntur studio
subditi labori.
178
*Tis the fire that's in the cup
Kindles the soul's torches,
*Tis the heart that drenched in wine
Flies to heaven's porches.
Sweeter tastes the wine to me
In a tavern tankard
Than the watered stuff my Lord
Bishop hath decanted.
Let them fast and water drink,

All the poets* chorus,
Fly the market and the crowd
Racketing uproarious :
Sit in quiet spots andthink,

Shun the tavern's portal,
Write, and never having lived,
Die to be immortal.
179
Mihi nunquam spiritus
poetric datur,
nisi prins fuerit
venter bene satur ;
dum in arce cerebri
Bachus dominatur,
in me Phebus irruit,
et miranda fatur.
Unicuique proprinm
dat natura munus,
ego numquam potui
scribere' ieiunus.
me ieiunum vincere
posset puer unus,
sitem et ieiunium
odi tamquam funus.
Unicuique proprium
dat natura donum ;
ego versus faciens
bibo vinum bonum,
et quod habent purius
doliacauponum y
talevinum generat
copiam sermonum. . . ,
i So
Never hath the spirit of
Poetry descended,
Till with food and drink my lean
Belly was distended,
But when Bacchus lords it in
My cerebral story,
Comes Apollo with a rush,
Fills me with his glory.
Unto every man his gift.

Mine was not for fasting.
Never could I find a rhyme
With my stomach wasting.
As the wine is, so the verse :
*Tisa better chorus

When the landlord hath a good
Vintage set before us.
181
cce, me^ proditor
pravitatis fui,
de qua me redarguunt
servientes tui.
sed eorum nullus est
accusator sui,
quamvis vclint ludere
seculoquc frui.
lam nunc in praesentia

presulis bcati,
sccundum domiziici
regulam mandati
mittat in me lapidem,
nequc parcat vati
cuixis non sit animus
conscius peccati
182
Good my lord, the case is heard,
I myself betray me,
And affirm myself to be
All my fellows say me.
See, they in thy presence are :
Let whoe'er hath known

His own heart and found it clean,
Cast at me the stone.
MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN
POTATORES exquisiti,
licet sitis sine siti,
et bibatis expediti
ct scyphorum inobliti,
scyphi crebro repetiti
non donniant,
et sermones inauditi
prosiliant.
Qui potare non potestis,

ite procul ab his festis,
non est locus hie modes tis.
Inter letos mos agrestis
modes tie,
et est sue certus testis
ignavie.
Si quis latitat hie forte,

qui non curat vinum forte,
ostendantur illi porte,
exeat ab hac cohorte :
plus est nobis gravis morte,

si maneat,
si recedat a consorte,
tune pereat.
To you, consummate drinkers,
Though little be your drought,
Good speed be to your tankards,
And send the wine about.
Let not the full decanter
Sleep on its
round,
And may unheard of banter
In wit abound.
Ifany cannot carry

His liquor as he should,
Let him no longer tarry,
No place here for the prude.
No room among the happy
For modesty.
A fashion only fit for clowns,
Sobriety.
If such by chance are lurking

Let them be shown the door ;
He who good wine is shirking,

Is one of us no more.
A death's head is his face to us,
If he abide.
Who cannot keep the pace with us,
As well he died.
N 185
Cum contingat te prestare,
ita bibas absquc pare,
ut non possis pcdc stare,
neque recta verba dare,
sed sit tibi salutare
potissimum
semper vas evacuare
quam maximum.
Dea deo ne iungatur,
deam dens aspcrnatur,
nam qui Liber appellatur
libertate gloriatur,
virtus eius adnullatur
in poculis,
et vinum debilitatur
in copulis.
Cum regina sit in mari,

dea potest appellari,
sed indigna tanto pari,
quern presumat osculari.
numquam Bacchus adaquari
se voluit,
nee se Liber baptizari
sustinuit.
1 86
Should any take upon him
To drink without a peer,
Although his legs go from him,
His speech no longer clear,
Still for his reputation
Let him drink on,
And swig for his salvation
The bumper down.
But between god and goddess,
Let there no marriage be,
For he whose name is Liber
Exults in liberty.
Let none his single virtue
Adulterate,
Wine that is wed with water is
Emasculate.
Queen of the sea we grant her,

Goddess without demur,
But to be bride to Bacchus
Is not for such as her.
For Bacchus drinking water
Hath no man seen;
Nor ever hath his godship
Baptized been.
187
Vagans loquitur
I
FAS et Nefas ambulant

pene passu pari ;
prodigus non redimit

vitiurn avari ;
virtus temperantia
quad am singular!
debet medium
ad utrumquc vitium
caute contemplari.
2
Si IcgiSse memoras
ethicam Catonis,
in qua scrip turn legitur :
" ambula cum bonis,*'

cum ad dandi gloriam
animum disponis
supra cetera
primum hoc considera,
quis sit dignus donis.
1 88
The grace of giving
RIGHT and wrong they go about

Cheek by jowl together.
Lavishness can't keep in step
Avarice his brother.
Virtue, even in the most
Unusual moderation,
Seeking for the middle course,
Vice on either side it, must
Look about her with the most
Cautious contemplation.
You'll remember to have read

In the works of Cato,
Where it plainly is set forth
"Walk but with the worthy."
If then you have set your mind
On the grace of giving,
This of first importance is,
He who now your debtor is,
Can he be regarded as
Worthily receiving?
189
3
Dare, non ut convcnit,
non cst a virtute,
bonuin est sccundum quid,
sed non absolute;
dignc dare poteris
ct mcreri tute
famarn muneris
sime prius noveris
intus et in cute
Giving otherwise is but
Virtue by repute,
Naught but relatively good,
Not the absolute.
But would you be generous
With security,
Have your glory on account,
Value with each amount,
full
Hesitate no more, but give
What you have to me.
191
Die Christ! Veritas,
die car a raritas,
die rara Carit as,
ubi nunc habitas?
aut in vallc Visionis,
aut in throno Pharaonis,
aut in alto cum Nerone,
aut in antro cum Timone,
vel in viscella scirpea
cum Moyse plorante,
domo Romulea
vel in
cum bulla fulminante?
Bulla fulminante
sub iudice tonante,
reo appellante,
sententia gravante,
Veritas opprimitur,
distrahitur et vcnditur,
lustitia prostante.
itur et recurritur
ad Curiam, nee ante
quis quid consequitur,
donee exuitur
ultimo quadrante.
19*
O TRUTH of Christ,
O most dear rarity,
O most rare Charity,
Where dwell'st thou now?
In the valley of Vision ?
On Pharaoh's throne?
On high with Nero?
With Timon alone?
In the bulrush ark
Where Moses wept?
Or in Rome's high places
With lightning swept?
With the lightning of Bulls,

And a thundering judge,
Summoned, accused,
Truth stands oppressed,
Torn asunder and sold,
While Justice sells her body in the street.
Come and go and come again
To the Curia, and when
Stripped to the last farthing, then
- Leave the judgment seat.
193
Respondit Caritas ;
homo, quid dubitas,

quid me sollicitas ?
non sum quod usitas
ncc in euro nee in austro,
nee in foro nee in claustro,
nee in bysso nee in cuculla,
nee in bello nee in bulla.
de lericho sum veniens,
ploro cum sauciato,
quern duplex Levi transiens
non astitit grabato.
194
Then Love replied,
"
Man, wherefore didst thou doubt?
Not where thou wast wont to find
My dwelling in the southern wind ;
Not in court and not in cloister,
Not in casque nor yet in cowl,
Not in battle nor in Bull,
But on the road from Jericho
I come with a wounded man."
195
VERITAS veiitatiun,
via, vita, veritas !
per veritatis sernitas

eliminans peccatiun;
tc vcrbum incarnatum
clamant fides, spes, caritas ;
tu prime pacis statum

reformas post reatum ;
tu post carnis delicias

das gratias
ut facias
beatum.
o quarn mira potentia,
quarn regia
vox principis,
cum egrotanti precipis
tolle
"
"surge, grabatum!
196
TRUTH of all truth,
O Life, O Truth, O Way,
Who by the strait paths of Thy Truth
Drivest our sin beyond the threshold of our door,
To thee, Incarnate
Word,
Faith,Hope, and Charity
Continually do cry.
Thou Who dost set Thy prisoner at Thy bar, and then
Makest him a man again,
And for that forespent carnal ecstasy,
Givest such grace,
That he accounts him blessed.
O miracle of strength !
O kingly word,
That once a sick man heard,
"
Arise, take up thy bed, and go thy way."
197
MS. OF BENEDIGTBEUERN
OMNE genus demoniorurn,
cecorum, claudorum, sive confusorurn,
attcndite iussum meorum
ct vocationem verborum.
Omnis creatura phantasmatum

que corroboratis principaturn
serpcntis tortuosi,
venenosi,
qui traxit per superbiam
stellarum partem tertiam,
Gordan,
Ingordin et Ingordan,
per sigillum Salomonis,
et per magos Pharaonis,
omnes vos coniuro,
omnes exorcize,
per tres magos Caspar,
Melchior et Balthasar,
per regem David,
qui Saul sedavit,
cum iubilavit,
vosque fugavit.
Vos attestor,
vos contestor,
per mandatum Domini,
ne zeletis,
quern soletis
vos vexare, homini,
ut compareatis
et post discedatis,
et cum desperatis
chaos incolatis.
198
EVERY one of demon race,
Blind and halt and ruinous.
Hear and give ear :
Every phantom creature, ye

Who hold the principality
Of that twisted venomed snake
Who drew with him in his proud wake
One third part of heaven's stars,
Gordan,
Ingordin and Ingordan,
By the seal of Solomon,
By king Pharaoh's wise enchanters,
By the names of the Wise Men,
Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar,
By David who gave peace to Saul,
And harping banished forth you all,
I summon you and bind you
the will of God,
By
All malice leave behind you,
And show yourselves abroad
Unto the men that ye were wont to harry.
Once appear and then
To Chaos get you gone,
And with all desperate things for ever tarry.
199
Attestor,
contestor,
per timendum,
per tremcndum
diem iudicii,
eterni supplicii,
diem miserie,
perennis tristitie,
qui ducturus est
vos in infernum,
salvaturus est
nos in aeternum.
Per nomen mirabile

atque ineffabile
Dei tetragrammaton,
ut expaveatis
et perhorreatis ;
vos exorcizo, Larve, Fauni, Manes,

Nymphe, Sirenc, Hamadryades,
Satyri, Incubi, Penates.
ut cito abeatis,
chaos in colatis,
ne vas corrumpatis
christiani tatis .
Tu nos, Dens, conservare ab hostibus dignei
200
I summon you and bind you
By that tremendous day,
The day of dread and judgment,
Of pain eternally,
Wailing and misery,
The day of your damnation,
And our eterne salvation.
By that unspoken name of dread

The Tetragrammaton of God,
Let you tremble, let you groan.
I exorcise you, Ghosts and Fauns,
Goblins, Sirens, Nymphs, and Dryads,

Satyrs, Nightmares, Household Gods,
Swift to Chaos get you gone,
And no more trouble Christendom.
And do Thou, O God, vouchsafe to keep us from our foes.
201
OBMITTAMUS studia,
dulce est desipere,
et carpamus dulcia
iuventutis tenere,
res est apta senectuti
seriis intendere.
Velox etas preterit
studio detenta y
lascivire suggerit
tenera invent a.
Ver etatis labitur,

hiemps nostra properat
vita dampnum patitur,
cura carnem rnacerat,
sanguis aret, hebet pectus,
minuuntur gaudia,
nos deterret iarn senectus
morborum familia.
Velox etas preterit
studio detenta 9
lascivire suggerit
tenera iuventa.
ZO2
LET'S away with study,
Folly's sweet.
Treasure all the pleasure
Of our youth :
Time enough for age

To think on Truth.
So short a day,
And life so quickly hasting
And in study wasting
Youth that would be gay !
'Tisour spring that slipping,

Winter draweth near,
Life itself we're losing,
And this sorry cheer
Dries the blood and chills the heart,
Shrivels all delight.
Age and all its crowd of ills
Terrifies our sight.
So short a day,
And life so quickly hasting,
Youth that would be gay !
203
Imitemur superos !
digna est sententia,

et amoris teneros
iam vcnantur otia ;
voto nostro serviamus,

mos iste est iuvenum,
ad plateas descend amus,
et choreas virginum.
Velox etas preterit
studio dctenta,
lascivire suggerit
tenera inventa.
Ibi que fit facilis

est videndi copia,
ibi fidget mobilis
membrorum lascivia,
duzn puelle se movendo
gestibus lasciviunt,
asto videns, et videndo
me mihi subripiunt.
Velox etas preterit
studio detenta,
lascivire suggerit
tenera iuventa.
204
Let us as the gods do,
*Tis the wiser part:
Leisure and love's pleasure
Seek the young in heart
Follow the old fashion,
Down into the street !
Down among the maidens,

And the dancing feet!
So short a day,
And life so quickly hasting,
Touth that would be gay !
There for the seeing

Is all loveliness,
White limbs moving
Light in wantonness.
Gay go the dancers,
I stand and see,
Gaze, till their glances
Steal myself from me.
So short a day,
And life so
quickly hasting,
Touth that would be gay !
205
TERRA iam pandit gremium
vernali lenitate,
quod gclu tristc clauserat
brumal! feritate;
dulci vcnit strepitu
favonius cum vere,
sevuin spirans boreas
iam cessat commovere.
tarn grata rerum novitas
quern patitur silere ?
Nunc ergo canunt iuvenes,

nunc cantum promunt volucres ;
modo ferro durior

est, quern non mollit Venus,
et saxo frigidior,
qui non est igne plenus.
pellantur nubes animi,
dum aer est serenus.
Ecce, iam vernant omnia
fructu redivivo,
pulso per temperiem
iam fiigore nocivo,
206
THE earth lies open breasted
In gentleness of spring,
Who lay so close and frozen
In winter's blustering.
The northern winds are quiet,
The west wind winnowing,
In all this sweet renewing
How shall a man not sing?
Now go the young men singing,
And singing every bird,
Harder is he than iron
Whom Beauty hath not stirred.
And colder than the rocks is he
Who is not set on fire,
When cloudless are our spirits,

Serene and still the air.
Behold, all things are springing

With lifecome from the dead,
The cold that wrought for evil
Is routed now and fled.
207
tellus feta sui partus
grande decus flores
gignit odoriferos
nee non multos colores.
Gatonis visis talibus
iiunuterentur mores.
Fronde nernus induitur,

iam canit philomena,
cum variis coloribus
iam prata sunt amena,
spatiari dulce est
per loca nemorosa,
dulcius est carpere
lilia cum rosa,
dulcissimum est ludere
cum virgine Formosa.
Verum cum mentes talia

recensent oblectamina,
sentio quod anxia
fiunt mea precordia.
si friget in qua ardeo
nee mihi vult calere,
quid tune cantus volucrum
mihi queunt valerc,
cum tune circum precordia
iam hyems est vere.
The lovely earth hath brought to birth
All flowers, all fragrancy.
Gate himself would soften
At such sweet instancy.
The woods are green with branches

And sweet with nightingales,
With gold and blue and scarlet
All flowered are the dales.
Sweet it is to wander
In a place of trees,
Sweeter to pluck roses
And the fleur-de-lys,
But dalliance with a lovely lass
Far surpasseth these.
And yet when all men's spirits

Are dreaming on delight,
My heart is heavy in me,
And troubled at her sight :
If she for whom I travail

Should still be cold to me,
The birds sing unavailing,
*Tis winter still for me.
309
CEDIT, hycms, tua durities,
frigor abiit; rigor et glacies
brumalis et fcritas, rabies,
torpor et improba segnities,
pallor et ira, dolor et macies.
Veris adest elegans acies,

clara nitet sine nube dies,
nocte micant Pliadum facies ;
grata datur modo temperies,
ternporis optima rnollities.
Nunc amor aureus advenies,

indomitos tibi subjicies.
tendo manus ; mihi quid facies ?
quam dederas rogo concilies,
et dabitur saliens aries
210
MEDIAEVAL LATIJi LTRICS
Now, Winter, yieldeth all thy dreariness,
The cold is over, all thy frozenness,
All frost and fog, and wind's untowardness.
All sullenness, uncomely sluggishness,
Paleness and anger, grief and haggardness.
Comes now the spring with all her fair arrays,

Never a cloud to stain the shining days ;
Sparkle at night the starry Pleiades.
Now is the time come of all graciousness,
Now is the fairest time of gentilesse.
Now Love, all golden, comest thou to me,
Bowing the tameless neath thine empery.

I stretch my hands : what will I have of thee ?
Whom thou hast given, make soft her heart to me,
And a ram leaping will I give to thee.
211
MEDIEVAL LATIJf LTRICS
IAMIAM rident prata,
iamiam virgines
iocundantur, terre
ridet fades.
estas nunc apparuit,
ornatusque florum lete claruit.
Ncmus revirescit,
frondent frutices,
hiems seva cessit :
led iuvcncs,
congaudete floribus,
amor vos allicit iam virginibus.
Ergo militemus
simul Veneri,
tristia vitemus,
nos qui tcneri,
visus ct colloquia,
spes amorque trahant nos ad gaudia.
2X2
Now the fields are laughing,
Now the maidens playing,
The face of earth is smiling,
Summer now appearing,
Joyous and lovely with all flowers beguiling.
The trees again are green,

Budding the underwood,
And cruel winter passes.
O lads, be gay of mood,
For Love himself now leads you to the lasses.
For the love of Venus

Go we now to war,
Banishwe all sadness,
We who tender are,
And may lovely faces and soft speeches,
Love and Hope now bring us into gladness !
LETABUNDUS rcdiit
avitim concentus,
ver jocundum prodiit,
gaudeat iuventus,
nova ferens gaudia;
modo vernant omnia,
Phebus sercnatur,
redolens temperiem,
novo flore faciem
Flora renovatur.
Risu Jovis pellitur

torpor hiemalis,
altius extollitur
cursus estivalis
soils beneficio,
qui sublato bravio
recipit teporem.
Sic ad instar tcmporis
nostri Venus pectoris
reficit ardorem.
Estivant nunc Dryades,

colic sub umbroso
prodeunt Oreades,
cetu glorioso,
Satyrorum concio
214
JOYOUSLY return again
Singing-birds in chorus,
Spring is in our ways again,
New delight before us.
O youth, be gay !
Green is on every spray,

And April, sweet of breath,
The old earth garnisheth.
Sluggish winter far away

Clearer skies have driven,
Higher swings the summer sun
In the arch of heaven.
Gone is the rime,
And come the warmer clime.
And even so
Love in our hearts again
Kindles the ancient flame.
Basking are the Dryads

In the forest rides,
Wander the Oreads
On the green hillsides,
Satyrs dancing,
215
psallit cum tripudio
Tcmpe p>cr amcna,
his alludens concinit,
cum iocundi meminit
veris, filomena.
Estas ab cxilio
redit cxoptata,
pic to redit gremio
tell us purpurata,
miti cum susurrio
suo domicilio
gryllus dclectatur;
et canore, iubilo,
multiformi sibilo
nemus gloria tur.
Applaudamus igitur
rerum novitati.
felix qui diligitur
voticompos grati,
dono letus Veneris,
cuius ara teneris
floribus odorat.
miser e contrario
qui sublato bravio
sine spe laborat.
216
MEDIAEVAL LATIff LYRICS
Through lovely Tempe chanting,
And through the rout,
Sings Philomel, remembering
The gladness of an older spring.
From exile comes again
Summer the long-desired,
The earth is gay again,
And scarlet- tired.
Grasshopper sings
With tiny chirrupings,
Happy in his small house.
With pipe and chirp and throstle
The green wood rings.
Then let us praise together

This earth that is new-stirred,
And happy be the lover
Who knows his prayer is heard,
By grace of Her
Whose altars fragrant are
With flowers new blown.
And God have pity on the sadder folk,
Who travail without hope !
217
AB estatis foribus
amor nos salutat,
humus picta floribus
facicm conmutat.
flores amorifcri
iam arrident tempori,
peril absque Vcncrc
flos etatis tenere.
Omnium principium
dies cst vernalis,
vcre mundus celcbrat
diem sui natalis.
omnes huius temporis
dies festi Veneris.
regna Jovis omnia
hec agant solemnia.
218
AT the gates of Summer,
Love standeth us to greet,
The earth, to do him honour,
Burgeons beneath his feet.
The flowersthat aye attend him
Laugh at the golden prime,
Should Venus not befriend them,
They die before their time.
Of all things the beginning

Was on an April morn,
In spring the earth remembereth
The day that she was born.
And so the feast of Venus,
Wherever Jove holds sway,
By mortal and Immortal,
Is kept a holiday.
219
ESTAS non apparuit
preteritis temporibus
que sic clara fuerit;
ornantur prata floribus.
Aves nunc in silua canunt
et canendo dtdce garriunt.
luno lovem superat

amorc maritali,
Mars a Vulcano capitur
re artificial!.
Aves nunc in silva canunt . . .
In exemplum Vcncris
hcc fabula proponitur,
Phebus Daphncra scquitur,
Europa tauro luditur.
Amor querit iuvenes

ut ludant cum virginibus,
Venus despicit senes,
qui inpleti sunt doloribus.
ancient summer
In the ancient days
So fair as this late comer
In her flowering ways.
Down in the greenwood sing the birds.
Dame Juno hath reconquered

The of gods and men,
sire
Vulcan hath taken in his net
Beauty and War again.
With glory of the goddess

Are the old legends full,
Of Daphne and Apollo,
Europa and the Bull.
It for youth, youth only,

is
To
love, be loved again.
For beauty mocks at old men,
The old are full of pain.
221
TBMPUS est iocundum,
o virgines,
modo congaudete
vos iuvcncs
O. o. totus floreO)
iam amore virginali
totus ardeoy
nouns novus amor
esty quo pereo.
Gantat philomcna
sic dulciter,
et modulans auditor ;
intus calco
O. o. totus Jhreo . . .
222
New love
Now's the time for pleasure,

Lads and lasses,
Take your joy together
Ere it passes.
With the love of a maid

Afire,
New love, new love,
Dying of desire.
Philomel singing
So sweet,
My heart burns to hear her
Repeat,
Aflower,
Afire,
New love, new love,
Dying of desire.
223
MEDIMVAL LATDf LTRICS
Flos est pucllarum,
quam diligo,
et rosa rosarum,
quam sepe video ;
0. o. totusfloreo . .
Tua me confortat
promissio,
tua me deportat
negatio.
O. o. totusfloreo . .
Tua mecum ludit

virgin! tas,
tua me detrudit
simplicitas.
O. o. totusfloreo . .
224
MEDIJEVAL LATIN LTRICS
Flower of all maidens,
My love,
Rose o'er all roses
Above.
Aflower,
Afire,
New love, new love,
Dying of desire.
All the sweet of life,

Xhy consenting,
All the bitterness,
Thy repenting.
Aflower,
Afire,
New love, new love,
Dying of desire.
Thy virginity
Mocks my wooing,
Thy simplicity
Is my undoing.
A/lower,
Afire,
New new love,
love,
Dying of desire.
3*5
Sile, philomena,
pro temporc,
surge cantilena
dc pectore.
O. o. totusfloreo . . .
Tempore brumali
vir patiens,
animo vernali
lasciviens.
O. o. totusfloreo . . .
Veni, domicclla,
cum gaudio,
veni, veni, bclla,
iara pereo.
O. o. totusfloreo,
iam amore virginali
totus ardeo,
novus novus amor
est, quo pereo.
226
O nightingale, be still
For an hour,
Till the heart sings,
Aflower,
Afire,
New love, new love y
Dying of desire.
Patient I have been,

Winter long,
Now comes wanton spring
With a song.
Aflower,
Afire,
New love, new love,
Dying of desire.
Come, mistress mine,

Joy with thee,
Come, fairest, come,
Love, to me.
Aflower,
Afire,
New love, new love,
Dying of desire.
2,2,7
VOLO virum vhrerc virilitcr,
diligam, si diligar equaliter.
sic amandum censeo, non aliter.
hac in parte fortior quam Jupiter
ncscio precari
commcrcio vulgari ;
amaturus forsitan
volo prius amari.
Mulieris animi supcrbiam

gravi supercilio despiciam,
nee maiorem tcrminura subiciam,
neque bubus aratrum preficiam ;
displicet hie usus
in miseros diffusus;
malo plaudens ludcrc
quam plangere dclusus.
Quc cupit ut placeat, huic placcam ;
prius ipsa favcat, ut favearn :
non ludemus aliter hanc aleam,

ne se granum reputet, me paleam ;
pari lege fori

deserviam amori,
ne prosternar impudens
femineo pudori.
228
I WOULD have a man live in manly fashion.
Yea, but given an equal passion :
I shall love,
So to my mind should love be,
And no other,
And herein myself I see
A better man than Jupiter.
I know not how to pray
In the old vulgar way.
Would she have me love her?
Then shall she first love me.
Well do I know the pride of woman's spirit,

And with sardonic eyebrow I contemn it.
Shall I put the greater last?
Set the ox behind the plough?
This common guise
Of wretches I despise,
And rather choose myself to play
Than be the toy that's thrown away.
She who would please me,

fain I shall please,
First shall she show her favour, for returning.
So shall we throw the main,
She shall not think me chaff,
Herself the grain.
I shall Love's servant be,
But with an equal yoke for her and me,
I'll have no woman laugh
At me flung prostrate by her coyness spurning.
2*9
Liber ego liberum me iactito
casto fore similem Hippolyto ;
non me vincit mulier tam subito
que seducat oculis ac digito.
dicat me placere,
et diligat sincere ;
hoc xnihi protervitas
placet in muliere.
Ecce, mihi displicet quod cecini,

et meo contrarius sum carmini,
tue reus, domina, dulccdini,
cuius elegantie non memini.
quia sic erravi,
sum dignus pena gravi ;
penitentem corripe,
si placet, in conclavi.
330
Free am I, and I boast myself as free.
Hippolytus was chaste, I chaste as he.
Nor with sudden wooing
Shall she be my undoing,
Tender eyes and hands seducing.
Let her pleasure in me find.
Love me most sincerely.
This forwardness towards me designed
Pleases in the female mind.
Alas, alas, what is it I have sung?

My song was all a lie, I am undone,
Lady, thy prisoner I !
Thy loveliness forgot,

Thy sweetness heeded not,
Worthy am I of all thy cruelty.
I do confess my guilt,
Then chide me as thou wilt,
But let thy chamber my tribunal be.
231
SALVE vcr optatum,
amantibus gratum,
gaudiorum
fax multorum,
flonim incrc men turn ;
multitude florum
ct color colorum
salvctotc,
ct estote
iocorum augmentum !
Dulcis avium concentus

sonat, gaudeat iuventus.
hiems seva transiit,
nam lenis spirat ventus.
Tellus purpurata
floribus et prata
rcvircscunt,
umbrc crescxmt,
nemus redimitur.
lascivit natura
oznnis creatura ;
leto vultu,
claro cultu,
ardor invest! tur;
Venus subditos titillat,
dum nature nectar stillat
sic ardor venereus
arnantibus scintillat
O SPRING the long-desired,
The lover's hour !
O flaming torch of joy,

Sap of each flower,
All hail !
O jocund company
Of many flowers,
O many-coloured light,
All hail,
And foster our delight!
The birds sing out in chorus,
O youth, joy is before us,
Cold winter has passed on,
And the spring winds are come!
The earth's aflame again
With flowers bright,
The fields are green again,
The shadows deep,
Woods are in leaf again,
There is no living thing
That is not gay again.
With face of light,
Garbed with delight,
Love is reborn,
And Beauty wakes from sleep.
ECCE, chorus virginurn,
tcrnpore vernali,
dum soils incendium
radios equal!
moderatur ordine,
iubilo semoto,
frond e pausa tilie
Cypridis in voto !
Cypridis in voto !
Fronde pausa tilie
Cypridis in voto !
In hac valle florida

floreus, fragratus,
intra septa lilia
locus purpuratus.
dum garritus merule
dulciter alludit.
philomena carmine
dulcia concludit.
MEDIAEVAL LATIN" LTRICS
HERE be maids dancing
In the spring days,
April light lancing
Long level rays.
Peace to your piping !
With linden boughs

At Beauty's altar
Pay ye your vows !
With linden boughs

At Beauty's altar
Pay ye your vows !
In this fair valley,

Fragrant and sweet,
Is a bright alley
With lilies deep,
Where the gay blackbird
Pipes all day long,
Sweetness recordeth
The nightingale's song.
With linden boughs
At Beauty's altar
Pay ye your vows !
MEDIAEVAL LATH* JLTRICS
Acies virgixiea
redimita flore ;
quis enarret talia,
quantoque decore
prcnitcnt ad libitum
Veneris occulta !
Dido nccis meritum

proferat inulta. . .
Here come the virgins
Flower-garlanded,
But who shall sing them,
How shall be said
That blaze of beauty,
Love's secret store ?
Tales of old sorrow
Grieve us no more.
With linden boughs
At Beauty's altar
Pay ye your vows !
MEDIASVAL LATIN LYRICS
MUSA venit carmine,
dulci modulaminc :
pariter cantemus,
ecce virent ornnia,
prata, rus et nemus,
mane garrit alaudula,
lupilulat cornicula,
iubente natura
philornena queritur
antiqua de iactura.
Hirundo iam finsat,

cignus dulce trinsat
mernorando fata,
cuculat et cuculus
per nemora vernata.
Pulchre canunt volucres,

nitet terre facies
vario colore,
et in par turn solvitur
redolens odore.
238
GAY comes the singer
With a
song,
Sing we all together,
All things young;
Field and wood and fallow,
Lark at dawn,
Young rooks cawing, cawing,
Philomel
Still complaining of the ancient wrong.
Twitters now the swallow,

Swans are shrill
Still remembering sorrow,
Cuckoo, cuckoo, goes the cuckoo calling
On the wooded hill.
The birds sing fair,

Shining earth,
Gracious after travail
Of new birth,
Lies in radiant light,
Fragrant air.
Late pandit tilia
frondcs, ramos, folia,
thymus cst sub ea,
viridi cum gramine,
in quo fit chorea.
Patet et in gramine
iocundo rivus murmure.
locus est festivus,
ventus cum tempcrie
susurrat tempestivus.
340
Broad spreads the lime,
Bough and leaf.
Underfoot the thyme,
Green the turf.
Here come the dances,
In the grass
Running water glances,
Murmurs past.
Happy is the place,

Whispering.
Through the open weather
Blow the winds of spring.
241
CLAUSUS Chronos ct serato
carcere vcr exit,
risu Jovis reserato
faciem dctexit,
purpurato
floret prato.
ver tene primatuin
ex algenti
renitenti
specie renatum.
Vernant veris ad amena

thyma, rosa, lilia,
his alludit filornena,
melos et lascivia.
Satyrus hoc excitatur,

et Dryadum chorea,
redivivis incitatur
hoc ignibus Napea.
o Cupido, concitus
hoc amor innovatur,
hoc ego sollicitus,
hoc mihi xnens turbatur.
TIME'S shut up and Spring
Hath broken prison,
Into clearer skies
Hath the sun arisen,
Purple flowers the heath.
Spring, put thy kingship on,
Reborn to gleaming beauty
From frozen earth.
Now springs the thyme in all his pleasant places,

Roses and fleur-de-lys,
And Philomel sweet singing
In wanton melody.
The Satyrs are awake,

Dancing the Dryads,
The nymphs in the brake
Kindling for his sake,
Lit with new fires.
O Love, by Spring awakened,

Desire is born,
And by the spring-fret shaken,
My mind is torn.
Ignem alo taciturn,
amo, nee ad placiturn,
utquid contra libitum
cupio prohibitum,
votis Venus meritum
rite facit irritum,
trudit in interitum
quern rebar emeritum.
Si quis amans per amare

amari posset mereri,
posset amor mihi vclle mederi,
quod facile sit, tandem beare,
perdo querelas absque levare.
Hoc amor predicat,

hec macilenta
hoc sibi vendicat
absque perempta . . .
Farce dato pia

Cypris agone,
et quia vincimur,
anna repone,
et quibus es Venus,
esto Dione.
I love, to my undoing,
The flame I tend is hidden,
And dangerous my wooing,
Desire of the forbidden.
My goddess in her wisdom
Makes naught of my poor vows,
And draws unto his ruin
One broken in her wars.
And yet, if ever lover
By loving love might earn,
Love might me yet recover,
And at the last might turn
And bid me happiness,
For these complaints that lighten not distress.
For this is Love's own hour,

This wretchedness
He claims in his own power,
Without redress.
O gracious Cyprian,
Have pity now.
Have I not borne enough ?
Lay down thy bow !
Yea, thou hast conquered, lay

Thy weapons down.
Thou hast been Beauty, thou hast been Desire :
Be Love alone.
*45
NOBILIS, mei
miserere precor,
tua facies
ensis est quo necor,
nam medullitus
amat meum te cor,
subveni !
Amor irnprobus
omnia superat,
subveni !
Come sperulas
tue eliciunt
cordi sedulas,
flammas adjiciunt,
hebet animus,
vires deficiunt :
subveni !
Amor irnprobus
omnia superat,
subveni !
Noblest, I pray thee
NOBLEST, I pray thee,

Have pity upon me,
Thy face is a sword,
And behold, I am slain.
From the core of my heart I have loved thee,
Aid, oh aid !
Love the deceiver.

Love the all-conquering,
Come to mine aid !
Thy hair hath entangled

My very heart's fibre.
The flame is upleaping,
And sinking my soul.
All strength ebbs from me,
Aid, oh aid !
Love the deceiver,

Come to mine aid !
24?
Odor roseus
spiral a labiis;
speciosior
pre cunctis filiis,
melle dulcior,
pulchrior liliis,
subveni !
Amor improbus
omnia superat,
subveni !
Decor prevalet
candori etheris ;
ad pretorium
prescntor Vcncris ;
eccc pereo,
si non subveneris ;
subveni !
Amor improbus
omnia superat,
subveni 1
The breath of red roses
Is thy lips breathing,
Lovelier art thou
Than all the world's maidens,
Sweeter than honey and whiter than lilies.
Aid, oh aid !
Love the deceiver,

Come to mine aid !
Thy beauty distaineth

The shining of heaven,
At the temple of Venus
I suppliant stand.
Behold, for I perish, if thou wilt not aid me !
Aid, oh aid !
Love the deceiver ',
Lovethe all-conquering,
Come to mine aid !
249
PRATA iam rident omnia,
dulce cst flores carpere,
sed nox donat his sornnia,
qui semper vellent luderc :
ve ve miser, quid faciam ?

Venus, znihi subvenias,
tuam iam colo gratiam.
Plangit cor meum misere,

quia caret solatio.
sivelles hoc cognoscere,
bcne posses, ut sentio.
o tu virgo pulcherrima,
si non audis me miserurn,
mihi xnors est asperrima.
Tempus accedit floridum,

hiemps discedit temere,
omne quod fuit aridurn,
germen suum vult gignere ;
quamdiu modo vixeris,
semper letare, iuvenis,
quia nescis cum
deperis.
Dulcis appares omnibus,

sed es mihi dulcissima,
tu pre cunctis virginibus
incedis ut castissima,
o tu, mitis considera,
nam per te gemitus
passus sum et suspiria.
250
O SWEET are flowers to gather,
The meadows laugh to-day,
But night brings too much dreaming
To some who still would play.
O sorrow on me, what am I to do?
O Lady Venus, wilt thou have no rue
On him who seeks thy grace?
My heart's for ever grieving

And is not comforted.
If thou wert but believing,
Then were I lightly sped.
O maid most lovely fair,
If thou wilt have no care,
Then, cruel, am I dead.
Sudden iswinter gone,

The time is blossoming,
And all that barren was
Is
burgeoning.
O Youth, while life is with thee,
Take thou delight unto thee,
Thou knowest not thy dying.
Sweet dost thou seem to all,
But sweeter far to me,
Above all maids that are,
Thou walk'st in chastity.
Bethink thee, gentle heart,
For thee is all my smart,
And my sore sighing.
STJSCIPE Flos florem,
quia flos designat aznorezn.
illode flore
nimio sum captus amore.
hunc florem, Flora
dulcissima, semper odora,
nam velut aurora
tua forma decora,
fiet
florem Flora vide,
quern dum videas, mihi ride,
florem Flora tene,
tua vox cantus philomene.
oscula des flori,
rubeo flos convenit ori.
flos in pictura
non est flos, immo flgura ;
qui pingit florem
non pingit floris odorem
252
MEDIAEVAL LATlJf LYRICS
Take thou this rose
TAKE thou this rose, O Rose,

Since Love's own flower it is,
And by that rose
Thy lover captive is.
Smell thou this rose, O Rose,

And know thyself as sweet
As dawn is sweet.
Look on this rose, O Rose,

And looking, laugh on me,
And in thy laughter's ring
The nightingale shall sing.
Kiss thou this rose, O Rose,
That it may know the scarlet of thy mouth.
O Rose, this painted rose

not the whole,
Is
Who paints the flower
Paints not its fragrant soul.
253
O COMES araoris dolor,
cuius mala male solor,
ncc habent rcmcdium,
dolor urget me, nee minim,
quern a predilccta dirum
en vocat exiliurn,
cuius laus est singularis,
pro qua non curasset Paris
Helene consortiiun.
Gaude vallis insignita,

vallis rosis redimita,
vallis flos convallium,
inter valles vallis una,
quam collaudat sol et luna,
dulcis cantus avium,
quam collaudat philomena.
nam quam dulcis et amena
mestis dans solatium !
SORROW, that art still Love's company,
Whose griefs abide with me,
And have no remedy,
Sorrow doth drive me how else should
: it be ?
1 go to exile from my darling one;
There is none like her, none,
Had Paris seen her, Helen were alone.
O valley, still be gay,
Valley with roses climbing all the way,
Among all valleys one,
Valley the hills.

the fairest that is in
Soft on thee
shines the sun,
Softly the moon; the birds
Sing rare for thee. O
valley, be thou fair !
Yea, for the sick at heart find solace there.
255
ANNI novi rcdiit novitas,
hiemis cedit asperitas,
breves dies prolongantur,
elementa temperantur.
subintrante Januario
mens estu languet vario,
propter pucllam quam diligo.
Prudens est multurnque forxnosa

pulchrior lilio vel rosa,
gracili coartatur statura,
prestantior omni creatura,
placet plus Francie regina.
mihi rnors est iam vicina,
nisi sanet me flos de spina.
Venus me telo vulneravit

aureo, quod cor penetravit.
Cupido faces instillavit,
Amor amorem superavit
iuvencule pro qua volo mori.
non iungar cariori,
licet accrescat dolor dolori.
Illius captus sum amore,

cuius flos adhuc est in flore.
dulcis fit labor in hoc labore,
osculum si sumat os ab ore.
non tactu sanabor labiorum,
nisi cor unum fiat duorum
et idem velle. Vale, flos florum !
256
New Tear
NEW Year has brought renewing, winter's gone,

Short daylight lengthens and the winds are still,
The year's first month of January's here,
And in my mind the rides still ebb and flow
For a girl's sake.
Slenderly fashioned is she, wise and fair,

Lovelier than the lily or the rose.
The Queen of France is not so beautiful.
And Death is now near neighbour unto me
Unless she heal the wound she made in me,
Flower o' the thorn.
Beauty hath pierced me with her golden shaft,

Cupid had kindled me, love upon love,
This little maid, for whom I'd gladly die.
No dearer heart, though for her love have I
Grief upon grief.
Thus captive am I for the love of her

Whose flower is newly blown.
O sweet should be the travail of that hour,
If ever on her mouth my mouth were sealed !
Yet never by her mouth could I be healed,

Unless upon my heart her heart were still,
Her will my will.
Rose of all roses, hail !
257
DIRA vi aznoris tcror,
et venereo axe vehor,
ignc ferventi suffocatus.
dcmc, pia, cruciatus.
Ignis vivi tu scintilla,

discurrens cordis ad vexilla ;
igni incumbens non pauxillo

conclusi mentis te sigillo.
Meret cor, quod gaudebat ;
die, quo te cognoscebat,

singularem et pudicam
te adoptabat in'amicam.
Profert pectoris singultus

et mestitie tumultus,
nam amoris tui vigor
urget me, et illi ligor.
258
BY the dread force of love am I thus worn,
On the wheel of desire am I thus torn,
I stifle in the fire.
merciful, bid thou my torment cease !
Thou spark of living fire,

Kindling the very secrets of desire,
Bowed o'er so fierce a flame,
1 set thcc on my heart as with a seal.
Mourns now the heart for that which made it glad ;
That day when first of thee it knowledge had,

It chose thee for its love,
Chose thee, unsullied, none beside thee, none.
Now naught but sighing breaks forth from my breast,

Tumult of sorrow will not let me rest,
Strong love of thee
Urges me on, and to it am I bound.
Virginalc lilium,
tuum pracsta subsidium.
missus in exilium
querit a te consilium.
Nescit quid agat, moritur,

amore tui vchitur,
tele necatur Veneris
sibi ne subveneris.
lure Veneris orbata,

castitas rcdintcgrata,
vultu dcccnti perornata,
veste sophie decorata,
Psallo tibi soli,

despicere me noli,
per me precor velis coli,
lucens ut Stella poli.
260
O virgin lily, come thou to mine aid,
Thine exile prays thee to be comforted,
He knows not what he does.
And if thou wilt not succour him, he dies.
thou on whom Desire hath no pbwer,

Thou in whom Chastity's reborn in flower,
Sweet still regard,
Thou who hast truth about thee for a cloak,
1 sing to thee, I sing to thee alone.

Despise him not, who asks this only boon,
That he may worship thee,
Thou who dost shine above him like a star.
261
DUM cstas inchoatur
amcno tempore,
Phebusque dominatur
dcpulso frigore,
Urdus in amore
pucllc vulncror
multimodo dolorc,
per qucm ct attcror.
Ut mei misereatur,
ut me rccipiat,
ct dcclinetur ad me,
et ita desinat !
262
WHILE summer on is stealing,
And come the gracious prime,
And Phoebus high in heaven,
And fled the rime,
For love of one young maiden,
My heart hath ta'en its wound,
And manifold the grief that I
In love have found.
Ah, would she but have pity,

And take me to her grace,
And stooping lean down o'er me,
And so would rest!
263
MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRIGS
DUM Diane vitrea
SCFO lampas oritur,
et a fratris rosca
luce dum succenditur,
dulcis aura zephyri
spirans omnes etheri
nubcs tollit;
sic emollit
vi chordarum pectora,
et inmutat
cor quod nutat
ad amoris pignora.
Icturn iubar hespcri
gratiorcm
dat humorem
roris soporiferi
mortalium generi.
O quaxn felix est

antidotum soporis,
quod curarum tempestates
sedat et doloris !
dum surrepit clausis

oculorum poris,
gaudio equiparat
dulcedini amoris.
264
WHEN Diana lighteth
Late her crystal lamp,
Her pale glory kindleth
From her brother's fire,
Little straying west winds
Wander over heaven,
Moonlight falleth,
And recalleth
With a sound of lute-strings shaken,
Hearts that have denied his reign
To love again.
Hesperus, the evening star,
To all things that mortal are,
Grants the dew of sleep.
Thrice happy Sleep !
The antidote to care,

Thou dost allay the storm
Of grief and sore despair ;
Through the fast-closed gates
Thou stealest light ;
Thy coming gracious is
As Love's delight.
2,6$
Morpheus in mentem
trahit impellentem
ventum lencm
segetes maturas,
murmura rivoriun
per arenas puras,
circulares ambitus
molendinorum,
qui furantur sornno
lumen oculorum.
Post blanda Veneris commercia,

lassatur cerebri substantia.
hinc caligantes mira novitate,
oculi nantes in palpebrarum rate !
hei quam felix transitus arnoris ad soporem,

sed suavior rcgressus soporis ad amorem ! .
Fronde sub arboris amena,

dum querens canit philomena,
suave est quiescere,
suavius ludere
in gramine
cum virginc
speciosa.
sivariarum
odor herbarum
spiraverit,
si dederit
thorum rosa,
dulciter soporis alimonia
post Veneris defessa commercia
captatur
dum lassis instillatur ....
266
Sleep through the wearied brain
Breathes a soft wind
From fields of ripening grain,
The sound
Of running water over clearest sand,
A millwhcel turning, turning slowly round,
These steal the light
From eyes weary of sight.
Love's sweet exchange and barter, then the brain

Sinks to repose;
Swimming in strangeness of a new delight
The eyelids close;
Oh sweet the passing o'er from love to sleep.
But sweeter the awakening to love.
Under the kind branching trees

Where Philomel complains and sings
Most sweet to lie at ease,
Sweeter to take delight
Of beauty and the night
On the fresh springing grass,
With smell of mint and thyme,
And for Love's bed, the rose.
Sleep's dew doth ever bless,
But most distilled on lovers' weariness.
267
Sic mea fata canendo solor,
ut nece proxirna facit olor.
roseus effugit ore color,
blandus inest meo cordi dolor.
cura crescente,
labore vigente,
vigore labente,
miser morior,
hei morior, hei morior, hei morior !
dum quod amem cogor, sed non amor

Si me dignetur quam desidero,
felicitate Jovem supero.
nocte cum ilia si dormiero
si sua labra semel suxero,
mortem subire,
placenter obire,
vitamque finire
libens potero,
hei potero, hei potero, hei potero.
tanta si gaudia recepero.
268
So by my singing am I comforted
Even as the swan that singing makes death sweet,
For from my face is gone the wholesome red.
And soft grief in my heart is sunken deep.
For sorrow still
increasing,
And travail unreleasing,
Andstrength from me fast flying,
AndI for sorrow dying,
Dying, dying, dying,

Since she I love cares nothing for my sighing.
If she whom I desire would stoop to love me,

I should look down on Jove ;
If for one night lady would lie by me,

my
And I kiss mouth I love,
the
Then come Death unrelenting,
With quiet breath consenting,
I go forth unrepenting,
Content, content, content,

That such delight were ever to me lent.
MEDIAEVAL LATW LYRICS
Ubera cum animadverterem
optavi manus, ut involvcrem,
simplicibus mammis ut alluderem
sic cogitando sensi Vcncrcm,
sedit in ore
rosa cum pudore,
pulsatus amore
quod os lamberem,
hei lambcrcm, hei lambcrem, hci lamberem,
luxuriando per characterem.
270
Innocent breasts, when
I have looked upon them,
Would that hands were there,
my
How have I craved, and dreaming thus upon them,
Love wakened from despair.
Beauty on her lips flaming,
Rose red with her shaming,
And I with passion burning
And with my whole heart yearning
For her mouth, her mouth, her mouth,
That on her beauty I might slake my drouth.
271
ESTAS in cxilium
iam peregrinatur,
leto nemus avium
cantu viduatur,
pallet viror frondium,
campus defloratur,
exaruit quod floruit,
quia felicem statum nemoris
vis frigoris
sinistra denudavit,
et ethera silentio turbavit,
exilio dum
aves relegavit.
Sed arnorem,
qui calorem
nutrit, null a vis
frigoris
valet attenuare,
sed ea reformare
studet, que corruperat
brume torpor.
amare crucior, morior
vulnere, quo glorior.
eia, si me sanare
uno vellet osculo,
que cor felici iaculo
gaudet vulnerare ! . . . .
272,
SUMMER to a strange land
Is into exile gone,
The forest trees are bare
Of their gay song.
The forest boughs are wan,
Deflowered the field,
Withered that which was fair,
Naked and bare
The happy greenwood is,
Stripped by the cruel cold,

And silence grieves the air,
For all the birds are into exile gone.
But upon love,

Love that itself is fire,
No power hath the cold,
For love's desire
Kindleth afresh that which was dead and old
In winter's hold.
I suffer, yea, I die,
Yet this mine agony
I count all bliss,
Since death is life again
Upon her lips 1
XIIlTH CENTURY MS.

DE rarnis cadunt folia,
nam viror totus j>criit,
iarn calor liquit omnia
et abiit ;
nam signa coeli ultima
sol petiit.
lam nocet frigus teneris,

et avis bruxna leditur,
et philomena ceteris
conqueri tur,
quod illis ignis etheris
adimitur.
Nee lympha caret alvcus,

nee prata virent herbida,
sol nostra fugit aureus
confinia;
est inde dies niveus,
nox frigida.
Modo frigescit quidquid est,

sed solus ego caleo ;
immo sic mihi cordi est
quod ardeo;
hie ignis tamen virgo est,
qua langueo.
XIIlTH CENTURY MS.

DOWN from the branches fall the leaves,
A wanness comes on all the trees,
The summer's done;
And into his last house in heaven
Now goes the sun.
Sharp frost destroys the tender sprays,

Birds are a-cold in these short days.
The nightingale
Is grieving that the fire of heaven
Is now
grown pale.
The swollen river rushes on
Past meadows whence the green has gone,
The golden sun
Has fled our world. Snow falls by day,
The nights are numb.
About me all the world is stark,

And I amburning ; in my heart
There is a fire,
A living flame in me, the maid
Of my desire.
275
Nutritur ignis osculo
et Icni tactu virginis;
in suo lucct oculo
lux luminis,
nee est in toto seculo
plus numinis.
Ignis grecus extinguitur

cum vino iam acerrimo ;
sed iste non extinguitur

miserrimo :
immo fomento alitur

ubenimo.
276
Her kisses, fuel of my fire,
Her tender touches, flaming higher.
The light of light
Dwells in her eyes :
divinity
Is in her sight.
Greek fire can be extinguished

By bitter wine; my fire is fed
On other meat.
Yea, even the bitterness of love
Is bitter-sweet.
ARUNDEL MS.
IPSA vivere mihi reddidit !
ccssit prospere, spe plus accidit

menti misere :
quc dum temere totam tradidit

se sub Venere,
Venus cthcre risus edidit
leto siderc.
Dcsidcrio nimis officit,

dum vix gaudio pectus sufficit,
quod concipio
dum Venerio Flora reficit
me colloquio,
dum, quern haurio, favus allicit
dato basio.
Sepe rcfero cursum liberum

sinu tenero sic me superum
:
addens numero.
cunctis impero, felix iterum
sitetigero
quern desidero, sinum tenerum
tactu libero.
278
ARUNDEL MS.
HERSELF hath given back my life to me,
Herself hath yielded far
More than had ever hoped my misery.
And when she recklessly
Gave herself wholly unto Love and me,
Beauty in heaven afar
Laughed from her joyous star.
Too great desire hath overwhelmed me,

My heart's not great enough
For this huge joy that overmastered me,
What time my love
Made in her arms another man of me,
And all the gathered honey of her lips
Drained in one yielded kiss.
Again, again, I dream the freedom given

Of her soft breast,
And so am come, another god, to heaven
Among the rest.
Yea, and serene would govern gods and men,
If I might find again
My hand upon her breast.
279
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
COPA P. 2
(Dancing Girl of Syria)
THE Copa belongs to that small miscellany of lighter verse

that Servius attributed to Virgil in the fourth century, and
that came down through the Middle Ages bobbing at a
painter's end in the mighty wash of the Aeneid. His great
name secured it a kind of charmed passage; and the
ascription persists among lovers of Virgil still. Its close-
ness to the Virgilian letter and extreme remoteness from

the Virgilian spirit have left it one of the riddles of author-
ship, and Dr. Mackail's solution is
perhaps as satisfying as
any : that it is so unlike Virgil he may very well have
written
it. For that matter, unlike anything else in Augustan
it is
Latin. Horace has the steady-pacing Death, even the

Vivite, ait, venio, but not this grim humorous Death who
tweaks one's ear in the by-going: Propertius has the
languor of the disillusioned senses, but not its smiling virile
mockery. Lake the Pervigilium Veneris it stands solitary in
literature till the novitas rerum, the renewing of all things, in
the twelfth century. A single line from it
Pone merum et talos. pertat qui crastina curat !
(Set down and the dice, and perish who thinks of

the wine
to-morrow!) quoted in the Carmina Burana, the profane
is
service-book of the Wandering Scholars it might stand as :
motto of their vagabond order.

There is another mediaeval citation of it, academic this
time. Mico, master of the oblates in the monastery of
280
St. Riquicr from 825-853, noted the line about the little
cheeses that they dry in baskets of rushes, and entered it
in his Opus Prosodiacum thus :
PISCINA. Sunt et caseoli quos iunceafiscina siccat. VIRGILIVS.
He began his Dictionary of Prosody because he had taken

to heart the criticism of a scholarly visitor at the
Abbey,
who said that the brethren's quantities left much to be
desired. Vir studiosus et valde doctus, an earnest man and
mightily learned, said John of Tritheim of him, and himself

a poet, writing small agreeable verses as inscriptions for
on the apple-room for instance, and on a friend
his cloister,
who saw a vision of Bacchus as he sat on the grass, and,
this from personal experience, on the disadvantages of
stoutness in scholarship: he was interested in contem-
porary poetry as well as in the classics, for he quotes from
poets of the last generation such as Paul the Deacon, and
from young contemporaries such as Walafrid Strabo, as
well as from Virgil and a rare thing in mediaeval scholar-
ship Lucretius.
It is probable that Mico's manuscript of the Copa was
brought to the Abbey in 814, when Angilbert, the greatest
among Charlemagne's princes, came there to die, while
Charlemagne himself lay dying in Aix-la-Chapelle. He
had been, in the intervals of passionate penitence that
broke his crowded life, its Abbot, though he never laid aside
his secular splendour a great soldier, a lover of music and
:
"
books and verses^ one of his own has the refrain, My lute,
awake "and himself so loveable that Charlemagne for-
gave him his passion for one of the fairy-tale princesses
whom no man might marry, and the son that he had by
her, who grew up into a sober historian. Dying, he left
the Abbey his magnificent library of two hundred MSS.,
and his body to be buried, not in the great abbey church
that he had built, but beneath the pavement at the steps,
T 281
so that the feet of the brethren as they went in and out
might pass above his head. Some years later, they carried
his body into the church and built a tomb above it, not
thinking it fitting that so great a benefactor of their Abbey
should lie so low: and meantime Mico browsed among
the manuscripts, and made a hortus siccus of the tavern
garlands.
What became of the manuscript of the Copa that Mico
used isnot known but a ninth century MS. in Lombard
:
script, the oldest and best (Vatican 3252) once belonged to

Cardinal Bembo, whose descant in praise of Platonic love
transfigures the last pages of Castiglione's Courtier, and to
whom Lucrezia Borgia wrote the little packet of letters
over which Byron pored for hours in the Ambrosian library,
to the scandal of the scholarly librarian who would have
shown him graver documents. Bembo took a good deal
of trouble with the Copa, and his emendation of one line,
which he seems to have owed rather to his experience of
Lucrezia than of palaeography, has crept into many editions.
Formosum tenerae decerpens ora pucllae,
read the MSS. a little obscurely:
Candida formosat decerpens ora puellae>
read the Cardinal. The text on which the present transla-

tion was first based was his, and I have been reluctant to
" "
abandon it, though to write scarlet for Candida, even in
"
its sense of glowing," is perhaps to out-cardinal the
Cardinal. The reading given in the text for formosum is
"
Robinson Ellis's very ingenious "per morswn" reaping by
a bite," which indeed, he adds sardonically, it did not
require an (Edipus to discover.
The reading fumosa, smoky, in line 3, instead offamosa,
well-known, is supported by three MSS. only, the Munich
group, eleventh and twelfth century. It has no prc-
282
rogativc : yet it accords better with the half-rustic tavern,
where even a shabby donkey might be welcome, than the
sophisticated famosa of the suburbs or the capital.
In line 14,
sertaque purpurea lutea mixta rosa,

"
the translation of serta by melilot," rather than the con-
"
ventional garland," has been challenged. It is true that
in this sense it only occurs thrice in classical Latin. Cato
advises serta campanica bene odorata, sweet-smelling Cam-
panian melilot, to be pounded with dry orris root, added to
six measures of the best must, and simmered gently in a
copper vessel over a fire of small twigs, and then smeared
on the lips of wine jars for their safe keeping and sweet
odour he also uses it in his recipe for Coan wine, which
:
begins by drawing water from a quiet sea on a day when

there shall be no wind. But Pliny's use of it is more
decisive: in numbering the flowers which may be used
for garlands rather by virtue of their leaf than their flower,
white bryony, meadowsweet, marjoram, balm-gentle, he
"
dwells longest upon mclilot, which we call sertolam
"
Campanam." For, he adds, it is much beloved in Gam-
pania in Italy and by the Greeks in Sunion ... it grows in

wild and wooded places, and that garlands have been made
from it from old time is shown in the name sertula which it
hath taken. In fragrance it is like the saffron crocus,
itself being white."
For discussion of the Copa see Robinson Ellis, Appendix
Vergtiiana, 1912; his article, Further Notes on the Ci'rtr, etc.,
in the American Journal of Philology^ viii. 1887, pp. 399-414;
Bcmbo's letter to Strozzi, Ad Herculem Strottium de Virgilii
Culice, Venice, 1530; on Mico, Traube in Poetae Latini

Carolini Aevi, iii.
pp. 271 ff. ; Ellis, Journal of Philology,
xxii. pp. 9-21; on Angilbert, see Hariulfus, Cronica Cen-
ttr, lib. ii.; Dummler in P.L.C., I. pp. 355 ff.; on
283
strto, Cato, De Agri Cultora, 107, 113; Pliny, Nat. Hist.
9, 29.
PETRONIUS ARBITER P. 6
d. c. A.D. 66
"
"MOST men toil for it," said Tacitus, but this man
loitered into fame. Not that he was ever accounted the
glutton or the profligate ;
the scholar, rather, the artist, of
exquisite living." Nero lumbered after him, heavy footed

and earnest, Caliban after Ariel. Petronius was his
Arbiter of Elegance: nothing could be agreeable till it
had passed the bar of that fastidious judgment. Thanks
to that same discrimination, he had been a vigorous
administrator in the provinces, where his part demanded
it: once in Rome, the old mask fitted easily, and steadily
day by day, the material for his great novel grew, the dis-
gusts, the will o* the wisp of flickering passion, the mon-

strous unshared comedy of things. But his own particular
monster was ceasing to be a good monster; the Emperor's
sudden displeasure gave him his cue. He died by his own
hand, very leisurely, with time to converse not indeed of
the immortality of the soul, as was fashionable on such
occasions, but of idle verses ; remembering too to smash
the myrrhine bowl that Caliban had always coveted. This
might not be death in the high Roman fashion, and Tacitus
felt it; but he is as much a victim as Caliban, or that shy
scholar John of Salisbury ten centuries away, to this strange
un-Roman charm.
They were very like the eighteen-nineties, this crowd
who exclaimed in ecstasy over a dying mullet, pointing
out to one another the fading crimsons of its little labouring
belly and Petronius among them is not unlike their elfin
:
caricaturist. There was a grace of casualness about him,
said Tacitus, a sort of unconcern, that gave him a curious
simplicitas. Tacitus, beyond all historians, has the humanity
that means the gift of divination; he had pierced to the
secret spring, the spirit that corruption could not touch,
the Petronius not of the Satyricon, but of the thirty-odd
poems scattered through mediaeval anthologies. It is true
that they are of uncertain ascription in the manuscript,
and at any rate mediaeval ascription goes for little, but
whoever wrote the fragments in the novel,
"
Ah God, ah God, that night when we two "
lay
(Qualis noxjuit illa y cK dcaeque,)
and the lament for the desolate waters where the wild birds
float no more (lam Phasidos undo), wrote also the
Sit nox ilia diu nobis diUcta, Nealce,
and the
litus vita mihi dulcius, mare !
Tradition has him born near Marseilles, the first Pro-

vengal poet, countryman to Bernart de Ventadorn rather
than to Horace; and it was there, three centuries later,
that Sidonius Apollinaris saw him a familiar ghost, at
home among the immemorial olive trees as " that other
little godship, for whom the countryman still lights his
twinkling lamp." He died about A.D. 66 two years later,
:
in 68, Nero too was dead, in the thirty-first year of his age.
Texts in Baehrens, Poetat Latini Minores, iv, 81, 84, 99,
too, 101, 94, 121. Qualis nox is from the Satyricon, ed.
Buecheler, 1912, p. 55. See also Tacitus, Armal. xvi. 18,
19; Pliny, Nat. Hist, xxxvii. 2, 7; Sidonius Apollinaris,
Carmina, xxiii. 155-7.
285
MEDIMVAL LATW LTRICS
PULCHRA COMIS P. ao
( Young and gold-haired)
THE quatrain comes from a ninth-century MS. in the

British Museum (Royal MS. 15. B. xix), parts of which
certainly belonged to the library of St. Rimy at Rheims,
as is stated in the note that curses
anyone stealing it. It
includes some writings of Bede, the satires of Pcrsius, an
A.B.C. on the voices of animals (bees abizant, elephants
brariant), and farewell verses from the Irishman Colman
to another Colman, about to start for home (see p. 74).
The ninth-century scribe attributes the Pulchra comis to
Virgil, but Aldhelm of Sherborne who knew it also thought
that Ovid wrote it, and quoted it as an example of the
'
amphimacric foot, ut Ovidius dulce quiescenti basia blanda
y
dab as.
See B.M. Royal MS. 15 B. xix. f 99*. Anthologia Latina,
674 ; Aldhelm, De Metris, cxxii.
TE VIGILANS OCULIS : P. 22
O BLANDOS OCULOS
(By day mine eyes : lovely restless eyes)
THESE two lyrics are from a strange anthology that was

compiled in the late ninth or early tenth century, and took
cover behind the vast respectable bulk of the Etymology of
Isidore of Seville. The manuscript, now lost, belonged to
the cathedral library of St. Sylvius at Beauvais, which was
wrecked in the Revolution. Some of its MSS. made their
way to the Bibliothique Nationale, but no trace of the
Codex Isidori Bellovacensis has been found. It is the only
286
source for some of the loveliest lyrics of the Latin Anthology,
among them eleven or twelve by Petronius, and the
untranslatable splendour of the Amare liceat si potiri non licet,
"
Still let me love though I may not possess." l
That they survive due

to the labour of Claude
at all is
Binet, biographer of Ronsard, who transcribed the poems

and published them at Poitiers in 1579, with the charac-
teristic Renaissance motto in Latin and French, Vitam
mortuo reddo, Je r'avie le mart. In the twelfth century,
Beauvais had been a great school of the humanities.
Radulfus of Beauvais, who had been Abclard's pupil,
taught there, and it was to him that Peter of Blois wrote,
upbraiding him for his indecorous enthusiasm for an-
"
tiquity: Priscian and Tully, Lucan and Persius: these
be thy gods." Helinand, the scholar-trouvire who after-
wards turned monk, studied there, in the days when the
whole world seemed too narrow for a temperament as
restless as a flying bird and its fame lingers in the name of
:
Vincent of Beauvais, the last of the humanists before dark-

ness fell upon the universities in the fourteenth century.
There are already shadows on the good Vincent: it was
he who said that Petronius Arbiter was a holy bishop of
Bologna, who died under Diocletian and wrote Lives of
the Desert Fathers, and evidently the legend persisted, for
Claude Binet refutes it with some asperity in his preface.
See the Anthologia Latina, 702, 714; Claude Binet:
C. Petroni. Arbitri itcmque aliorum veterum epigrammato
hactenus non cdita, CL Binetus conquisivit et nunc primum publi-
cavit. Poitiers, 1579.) Peter of Blois, Epist. vi. (Nfigne,
207, c. 1
8); Helinand, Epistola ad Gdterum (Migne, 212,
c. 748).
1
Translation by George Saintsbury.
287
DIG QUID AGIS P. 24

(Lovely Venus, what's to do?)
Die quid agis is from the great seventh or eighth century

Codex Sdmasianusy written in uncials, and now in Paris. It
once belonged to Claude de Saumaise, the Salmasius who
was Milton's rival,and rebuked him for his unbridled and
amatorious reading. There is no knowledge as to where
it was written and what were its haunts before the seven-
teenth century. The first reference to it is by Salmasius
"
himself, an ancient book, which I was made a present
of by the learned and ingenious Jean Lacurne, of judgment
singularly chaste, whom I mention for his honouring."
Jean Lacurne was baillie of Arnay-le-Duc, not a great
way from Cluny, whose magnificent library of i ,800 MSS.

was scattered and spoiled in the Wars of Religion, and it
has been suggested that it may have been yet another of
the treasures of Cluny, and have passed into the hands of
a neighbouring book-lover ; but there is no mention of it
in the twelfth-century catalogue. Ricse, who edited it for
the Anthologia Latina, believes it a copy of an anthology
made in Africa during the sixth century, probably by the
African poet Luxorius, or by a friend, since his own in-
different poetry bulks largely in it. There are quotations
from Virgil, Ovid, Propertius, but for the most part from
poets of the fifth and sixth century a lyric Aurea mala by
:
Petronius, and above all the Pervigilium Veneris.

See Anthologia Latina, pp. xii-xxiii, 24; Gaston Boissier,
Revue Critique, 1869, pp. 198-201.
288
AUSONIUS AND PAULINUS P. 26

OF NOLA
c. 3io-c. 395 353-431
A GOOD deal of the poetry of Ausonius belongs to his old

age in Bordeaux, a vintage as mellow as the claret that still
" 9
keeps his name in pleasantness and blessing/ as John of
Salisbury said of two good scholars dead. He was over
seventy when he wrote his Memoirs, with little but pleasant-
ness to put on record, and barely enmity enough to serve
as grindstone to an epigram. The death of his young wife
was his one sharp sorrow; she died when she was still
" " that he had
the little lass to thought find her even in
her old age. Writing thirty-six years after it, the house
empty about him but her children lived, and the
is still :
boy had come to high offices of State. It is the things

which Ausonius reveals unconsciously that win him liking,
not those which he sets out to celebrate with a kind of
innocent pomp not the chair of rhetoric at twenty-five,
:
nor the imperial tutorship in his fifties, nor the consulship

at sixty-nine, but that he loved and taught rhetoric all his
life, and kept his simplicity that he was a scholar without
:
jealousy : that the boy he taught so loved him that when

he became emperor nothing was too good for his old tutor,
till
finally he has him sitting, bewildered and happy, in
the ivory chair. Gratian was assassinated in 383, and
even in this Ausonius was fortunate, for it meant release
from offices the old grammarian was hardly fit for, and a
"
return to his walled garden with its quiet paths," nidus
seructutis, he called it, the nest of his old age.
There is a good deal of correspondence from the villa at

Bordeaux, steeped in the vast leisure of the ancient world.
To Theon, commending the flavour and lamenting the
fewness of his oysters: to Theon, complaining of the
MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRKS
badness of his poems over against the goodness of his apples ;
who would think they were chips of the same block? to
"
Symmachus, verses, after a night of wine and flutes but
do you read them also a little flown and dilutior] for it is
outrageous that a strictly abstemious reader should sit in
judgment upon a poet a little drunk." There is no
quarrelling with life, no suggestion of the questioning that
sometimes breaks through the equally mannered letters
of Sidonius Apollinaris a century later, once in a cry far
" O
beyond anything he ever wrote in verse :
abject
necessity of being born : O
hard necessity of living : O
sharp necessity of dying!" Yet we may call no man
happy this side death it was the last decade of Ausonius'
:
life that broke his heart.
"
And so, Paulinus, you cast off the yoke "
to the reader of the letters in the casual ordering of the
older editions, the opening sentence comes like thunder
out of a blue sky. Gradually the story pieces itself together.
Paulinus, governor of a province and consul before he was
thirty,was the pupil of whom a Roman master dreamed :
Ausonius never weary of recalling that in the consulship

is
the pupil had preceded his master. Now with political

honours behind him, he had come to settle down on the
Aquitaine estate, and follow the laurel of Apollo which no
less surely awaited him. One notes that Rome is no
longer the goal of poets, and the Midi with its tradition
of Greek culture will be the nucleus of light for centuries.
It was Vicnne that the Blessed Gregory
to Desiderius at
wrote in wrath and grief, for that he sang the songs of
Apollo, and the grammarians of Toulouse argue over the
vocative of ego amid the crash of empires. There arc four
letters to Paulinus, casual and gay, thanks for a new
savoury, a harassed bailiff, an exchange of verses, affec-

tionate chiding of the younger man's reluctance to create.
290
Then, suddenly, emptiness and silence. Paulinus had
taken a sudden journey into Spain, presumably on some
business connected with his wife's estates, but no man
certainly knew the reason. He gave no explanation, took
leave of no one, not even so much as the salve of courteous
enemies for which Ausonius pleaded. No message came
from him. Lover and friend he had put far from him,
and his acquaintance into darkness. There followed four
years of impenetrable and cruel silence.
Four years is a long time at seventy, and Ausonius loved
him. Letter follows letter, of affectionate raillery a pox
upon thisSpain ! of passionate appeal that checked itself
for lack of dignity and still broke out afresh, of bitter and
wounding reproach. Yet it seems not wholly to have been
Paulinus' fault, unless that he had deliberately gone into
retreat so strait that no rumour from his old world could
reach him. At the end of the four years three letters came
to him by a single messenger, and he hastens to make what
amends he could. At best, it is written from a great way
" As a dream when one awake
off. th, so shah thou despise
their image." Apollo, the Muses, the dusty laurels, what
were these to the man
"
Whom Joy hath overtaken as a flood,"
"
"
whom long eternity has greeted with its " individual
f>
kiss ? The small tuneful business of the old days is too
clearly the dance of gnats above a stream in summer.
Ausonius had not spared him ; there is a trace of Rutilius
Namatianus' bitterness against this new Circe of a religion
that made men's minds brutal, not their bodies; but
Paulinus has no resentment. He has chosen. Henceforth
his mind is a torch, flaming through the secrets of eternity.
But his heart aches for his old master, and the gratitude,
all but adoration, he lavishes upon him might have deceived
most men. It did not deceive Ausonius. The letter in
391
which he makes answer is poignant enough; but the super-
"
scription is more poignant still To Paulinos, when he
had answered other things, but had not said that he would
come." Eternity? He words me, he words me. One
thing was clear to Ausonius :
"
Nous n'irons plus au bois,
Les lauricrs sont coupes."
And this time he gives up argument, speaks no longer of a

lost career, of great promise starved, but pleads for love's
sake only.
" "
And so, Paulinus, you cast off the yoke
There follow pages that have only one parallel, the cry
from Po Chu-i in exile, four centuries later " O Wei-chih,
Wei-chih This night, this heart Do you know them or
!
not? Lo Tien bows his head." Then Ausonius falls to

dreaming he hears the grating of the boat on the beach,
;
the shouting of the people in the street, the footsteps, the

familiar knock on the door.
"
Is't true? or only true that those who love
"
Make for themselves their dreams?
That wounding spearhead of Virgil reached its mark.

Paulinus answered in something like an agony of love and
compassion. Once again he pleaded the mystery that no
man sees then the crying of his own heart
from without :
silenced the sober elegiacs, and he breaks into one of the

loveliest lyric measures of the ancient world.
" "
I through all chances that are given to mortals
After this there is silence. Whether Ausonius laid it to his

"
But did not say that he
heart, or wrote again above it,
would come," there is no showing. few years saw him A
go down to his grave, a shock of corn fully ripe, full of
29*
years and honour, his children and grandchildren to
mourn him the same years saw Paulinos parish priest of
:
the shrine of St. Felix at Nola.

"
To guard thy altar through the silent night,
And sweep thy floor and keep thy door by day,
And watch thy candles burn "
"
wild le rtve de ce sinateur et de ce consulaire." Year after
year his devotion to his saint brings an ode for his feast,
the 1 4th of January, cheerful and sweet, like a robin singing
in the snows the loveliest written for that eternal April of
:
the heart which was to flower in the twelfth century, the

faint clear colouring of the first spring flowers, crocus and
almond blossom. But never again is he the lark singing
at heaven's gate: never again so stung by the lacrimae
rerum, the blindness and the pain of solitary hearts, the
suffering divinity of human passion, as to transmute its
anguish into ecstasy.
"
The poetical fame of Ausonius," said Gibbon in an
" A
acid footnote, condemns the taste of his age." good
deal of it is sad stuff: the elegant trifles that weigh like
lead on later generations. But his De Rosis Nascentibust
own "
in its phrase, lives again in each succeeding rose."
Desp^riers of Lyons translated it, after twelve hundred

years,
" "
Un jour de mai que Taube
and Ronsard caught the echo of it from him,
" "
Mignonne, allons voir si la rose
and after him Spenser in a slower melody,

"
Gather the rose of love, whilcst yet is time,"
and after him the Cavalier lyrists in the loveliest melody
of all. Cupido Cruciatus is the new romantic imagination
293
working on Virgil, himself romatic enough, and in the
fields of the Sorrowful Lovers, from a phrase or two in
his original,
"per incertam lunam sub luce maligna

Est iter in siluis,"
he has created the twilight world of Western Europe. As

for the Moselta,it is a mirror of quiet observation. Edward
Fitzgerald was so haunted by the lovely pause after the
trtmit absens that he scribbled a fragment, adapted from
y
Shelley, to his friend Cowcll

" in
Time's river fleeting
The image of that little vine-leaf lay,
Immovably unquiet and for ever
It trembles but it cannot pass away."
The text used for the poems of Ausonius is the edition

by Schenkl (Mon. Germ. Hist., 1883). De Rosis Nascentibus,
p. 243; Mosella, 11. 192-195, p. 88; Silva Myrtea from

Cupido Cruciatus, 11.
5-9, p. 121 ; Ad Uxorem, Epigr. xviii,
p. 200.
For Paulinus of Nola, the edition by Hartel (Corpus
Vienna, 1894). Non inopes animi
Script. Eccles. Lat. 9 xxx.,
from Carmen x. 11. 162-180. Ego te per omne, Carmen
xi. 11. 49-68. Ver avibus, Carmen xxiii. 11. 1-20. Cerne
deum, Carmcn xxvii. 11.
284-306.
PRUDENTIUS P. 42
348-0,405
NOTHING is known of Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, the

greatest and least egotistical of the Christian Latin poets,
except the little that he himself tells us that he was born ;
when " old Salias " was consul, and that when he came to
294
write the preface to his Book of Hours, the snows were
upon his head. He writes of three towns of Northern
Spain, Tarragona, Calahorra, Saragossa, as nostras urbes,
but with especial intimacy of the last and of " the folk :
" as his own

of the Pyrenees people. His life was spent
in the law-courts he rose to high judicial office under the
:
Emperor Theodosius, like himself a plain Spanish gentle-

man; and when he was fifty -seven, turned from these
things to find the kingdom of God. Looking back upon
his life he remembers as Augustine did the sins of his
youth, but also

" How many times the rose
Returned after snows."
He does not speak of any formal vows his communion :
is the communion of those forgotten saints, before whose

unnumbered ashes he had knelt in Rome, and for whom
he made grave remembrance. Augus-
his Peristephanon of
tine, Jerome, and Ambrose were his contemporaries, and

have left a greater name even Fortunatus has been sainted,
:
but not Prudentius. Yet his phrases are the naked poetry
of religion: and in an age when goodness might easily
have become a negative virtue of denial and renunciation,
"
he proved, like Donne, that learning could be Christ's
" To
ambassador," and Beauty, paradise's flower." trans-
late him is
impossible and if these halting versions have
:
been included, it is because any collection of mediaeval

lyric is poor unless his shadow falls across it.
The texts are taken from the edition by J. Bergman,

Carpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorwn, Ixi. (Vienna,
1926), Hymnus ante somnum, p. 32, 11. 9-20, 149-153 ; Hymnus
circaExsequias Defuncti, p. 56, 125-end. For the auto-
11.
biographical references in his poems see the Prolegomena.
295
BOETHIUS P. 48
c. 480-524
IN 524, Anicius Manlius Scvcrinus Boethius, ex-consul and

Roman senator, died by order of Thcodoric under torture
in the dungeon of Pavia in his forty-fifth year. He had
been Theodoric's most trusted counsellor; Theodoric had
looked up to him with the admiration of the great bar-
barians for the Romans who were politically their servants
and spiritually their lords. But the Gothic king grew old
and wary and suspicious; Boethius for his part had too
much the intransigeance of the Platonist turned politician.
Intransigeance can look like treason, and in a sudden
outburst of savagery, Theodoric had him done to death.
Two years later, he himself was dead, Procopius said of
remorse, under the pitiful great bulk of his tomb at Ra-
venna the other had already entered on his immortality.
:
His work as interpreter of Greek to Roman thought, in

mathematics, in music, above all the translation and com-
ment on would have kept his fame alight among
Aristotle,
the scholars :but the Consolation of Philosophy written in
prison, in presence of torture and imminence of death, has
made his name as gracious as a benediction.
The texts are from the Teubner edition of the De
Philosophiae Consolations :Qpaenam discors, Book V. 3 ;
Stupet tergeminus, iii. 12, 29-58; Si vis celsi iura, iv. 6,

11.
11. 1-18; Ite nunc fortes, iv. 7, 11. 32-5. In the Eurydice
poem it has been pointed out that unless Orpheus is
pronounced in the Elizabethan manner, which offends the
classical ear, the line
Orpheus saw Eutydice

haltsby a half-foot, and that the monosyllable saw should
be replaced by some longer verb. Yet Orpheus is so heavy
296
a dissyllable that any variant seems to me to crowd the
line, like hurrying a tolling bell.
VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS P. 58
c. 530-c. 603
VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS, "who is so charming," says

"
Professor Saintsbury, that they ought to have called him
A-venantius," is a kind of halcyon on the dangerous
Frankish seas. He was born at Trieste, and though he
was afterwards to know the wildness of the Breton coast,
the Adriatic was the horizon of his youth. His learning,
as gay and perhaps as shallow as mosaic, he got in Ra-
venna; sometime in his thirties he set out from it to give

St. Martin thanks for restoring the eyesight he had lost
there, and came dallying through France on his way to

the sovereign shrine of the Saint at Tours, visiting bishops
and great ones, and leaving behind him a trail of little
verses. The record of the journey is in the eleven books of
poems which he collected in his old age at the convenient
request of his friend Gregory, Bishop of Tours, who ad-
mired a talent so much more decorative than his own
historian's prose: they are little letters in verse, remin-
iscences of dinners where the fish was as subtly flavoured
as the Falernian, of churches where the sunlight wavered
on the ceiling as on sea-water, of the midday halt hi a
wood, July heat and dust and the lapse of spring water
and a tired man lying on the grass and chantingVirgil to
himself, or the Psalms. He was for a while at court,
writing an epithalamion for Sigebert and Brunhild, and

poems on the queen's apple-orchard: the grandsons of
Chlovis, the great barbarian who first wore the Roman
purple, were ruling and quartering France among them,
u Z97
with bursts of astonishing savagery, but no wind blew rough
against Fortunatus. All men liked him, and he had the
sensitive kind of friendship that could forbear leave-taking
because his friend was tired and still asleep. Finally, in
567, his wandering's brought him to Poitiers, to the abbey
which Radegunde had founded, and which her living
presence had already made a shrine.
It was then thirty-six years since Clothair had brought
her from the sack of her uncle's house in a punitive expedi-
tion against Thuringia, to grow up into his reluctant
queen: but the grave charm that had looked out at him
from the eyes of a child, and that kept him for twenty
years bewitched and at bay, was about her still. Some
divinity hedged her his last wild pursuit of her ended in
:
penitence as for sacrilege before St. Martin's altar, and the

gift of the abbey lands in perpetual possession. There she
lived, cruel to herself but gentle to all men, and com-
passionate above all to poor captives, with the memory of
her own childish anguish still quick in the poem that
Fortunatus made from her telling of it. Her influence fell
on him like a consecration. Sensitive to all beauty, of the
spirit or the flesh, and capable of strange and high exalta-
tions, he settled down beside her, took holy orders, and in
his old age was consecrated Bishop of Poitiers in the church
where his body was laid. Two hundred years later Paul
the Deacon, another Italian poet and exile, came to his
grave and wrote his epitaph.
Criticism has been hard on Fortunatus.
" Le
poite
ipUwrim^ Vabbt gastronome" says Ampere, a little unkindly,
and undoubtedly a good deal of his life did consist in eating
and drinking. Radegunde indulged him, with the tolerance
that sometimes accompanies great personal austerity.
Fortunatus writes little verses about a tablecloth of roses
and ivy, thanks for eggs and plums : he is to eat two eggs
a day, and he has eaten four may all the days of his life
:
298
obey her as did his greed this day. But there was no gross-
ness in him, and there were times when fire was laid upon
his lips. Vexilla regis prodeunt was written for the coming
of a fragment of the Holy Rood to Poitiers five hundred :
years later it was the inarching song of the men who

fought for the Sepulchre. If he loved good cheer, he loved
goodness more: and he had as absolute a vision as that
older materialist and mystic of the ladder between earth
and heaven.
The text of the poems is from the edition by F. Leo in
the Monumenta Germaniae Historiae y 1881.
" "
Tempora si solito, Bk. VIII. 6. pariter habeatis utraque
includes Agnes, Radegunde's adopted daughter and abbess
of the convent, to whom Fortunatus wrote some of his
prettiest verses.
regina potent, VIII. 8. It was Radegunde's custom in
Lent to go into utter solitude.
Allans domini pollens, III. 26 written from an island off
:
the coast of Brittany to his friend Rucco in Paris.

Nectar vina cibus, VII. 2: written to Gogo, a great
Prankish noble. The Apicius of the text was the author of
ten books on cookery, who finally committed suicide,
finding life on an income reduced to ten million
intolerable
sesterces a year.
Tempora lapsa volant, VII. 12. A fragment of elegiacs
written to lovinus, governor of Provence. Naso is an
emendation for the Lysa of the text.
For the life, see Paul the Deacon, Historia Langobardorum,
ii.
13. Vita S. Radegundis, begun by Fortunatus. (M.G.H.
Script. Rer. Mer. ii. 358 ff.)
299
ST. COLUMBA P. 68
521-597
ST. COLUMBA was born Gartan in Donegal on December

at
7th, 521, and died before the altar in the monastery chapel
on lona a little after midnight on the 5th of June, 597.
The tradition that he wrote the Altos Prosatur, of which
this stanza is a fragment, is an old one, and its rhythms
accord well enough with the great voice that sent the
strophes of the XLivth Psalm striding the hills like thunder
peals and volleying against the walls of the Pictish dun.
According to one of the curious Irish-Latin prefaces, the
Attus Prosator was seven years in writing, in a dark cell
without atonement for the great fight with Diar-
light, in
muid the High-king at Gooldrevne, in which Columba had
remembered rather that he was great-great-grandson of
Niall of the Nine Hostages than that he was a man of God.
"
Another says that it was suddenly made," on a day
when Colum Gille was in lona, and nobody was with him
but Baithinn, and they had no food except a sieve of oats.
"
And Colum Cille said to Baithinn, Nobler guests are
coming to us to-day, O Baithinn," which were folk of
Gregory coming with presents to him. And he asked what
food there was, and when he heard he bade Baithinn stay
and look to the guests, while himself went to the mill. So
he took the sack of oats from the stone that is in the refectory
at lona, and put it on his shoulders, but his burden felt
heavy to him, so he composed the hymn Adiutor laborantium
from there up to the mill. Now when he put the first
handful into the mill, he began the first capitulum of the
"
Altus, and the composition of the hymn and the grinding
of the corn were completed together, nor was it as the fruit
of meditation, but by the grace of God."
Now Gregory's folk had brought rich presents, the Cross
300
which is called the Great Gem, and the Hymns of the
Week, and in return Colum Cille gave them the hymn to
take back to Gregory. But as they went eastward they
made three stanzas of their own in place of those Colum
Cille had written. And when they began to read it to
Gregory God's angels came and stood listening, and
Gregory too stood up. But when the false verses were
reached the angels of God sat down, and Gregory sat down
also. So the messengers confessed and got forgiveness:
and Gregory said the hymn would be the best of all praises
if Colum Cille had not too slightly commended the Trinity
per se, as well as in Its creatures and when Colum Cille

:
heard this he composed the In te Christe. y
This stanza is the first use in poetry of the tremendous

rhythms of the Vulgate version of Zephaniah: Juxia est
dies Domini magnus, juxta est et velox nimis : vox diet Domini
amara, tribulabitur ibi fortis. Dies irae dies ilia, dies tribu-
lationis et angustiae, dies calamitatis et miseriae, dies tenebrarum
et caliginisy dies nebulae et turbinis, dies tubae et clangoris super
munitas et super angulos excelsos.
civitates It is the indestructible
radium that transfigures the De Fide Catholica of Hrabanus
Maurus in the ninth ventury, the Prose of the Dead of St.
Martial of Limoges in the tenth, till finally in the Dies Irae
of Thomas of Celano it burns through the inmost veil of
heaven. But the human sadness of the last lines, on the
ending of the love of women and of desire, is neither in the
Vulgate, nor in the Dies Irae.
" There are
many" graces upon this hymn," says the
Irish commentator, namely, angels present during its
recitation: no demon shall know the path of him who
shall recite it every day, and foes shall not put him to
shame on the day he shall recite it ; and there shall be no
strife in the house where its recitation shall be customary :
ayc^ and it protects against every death except death on

the pillow, neither shall there be famine nor nakedness in
301
the place where it shall be oft recited : and there are many
others."
The text and prefaces, here abridged, are in the Irish
Liber Hymnorum,66 ff., ii. pp. 23-27, Bernard and Atkinson
i.
(Henry Bradshaw Society, 1898) for the life of Columba :
sec Adamnan, Vita S. Columbae the story of the ; singing of

the cxuvth Psalm is in Book I. chapter 37.
A SCHOLAR OF MALMESBURY P. 70
Eighth Ctntury
AT the end of the famous ninth-century Vienna MS. of the

letters of St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany, are five
poems for a long time attributed to Aldhelm, abbot of
Malmesbury in 675, and Bishop of Sherborne, 705-709,
whose memory Alfred held in great reverence. It is
Alfred who told the story of how the bishop used to stand
as a gleeman on the bridge, singing fragments of the
Gospel interspersed with scraps of clowning, if by any
means he could win men's ears and then their souls. For
a long time it was thought that these poems might be his,
the very ofiuscula for which Lull wrote to Dealwin, asking
him to send them out to him, " for the consoling of my
pilgrimage and in memory of that blessed bishop." Yet
this poem is evidently addressed to him, not written by
"
him, for there is a pun on Aldhelm, the old helmet," in
the opening line,
" Lector cassis catholica,"
and it is more probably written by one of his clerks, sent

on some errand through Devon and Cornwall, then part
of the diocese of Sherborne. It is the story of a miraculous
escape, the crash of the abbey buildings in a furious storm,
the abbey church in which the brethren were singing matins
302
alone left That the writer was a scholar of
standing.
Malmesbury seems probable from the Irish character of
the metre, and the wild clamour of strange and barbaric
words. Aldhelm himself had it from Maildulf who founded
Malmesbury, and the schools of Hadrian and Theodore
at Canterbury never quite rid him of his passion for splendid
and far-fetched speech.
For text and discussion of authorship see Ehwald,
Aldhelmi opera (1909), pp. 519 et seq. : Henry Bradley in the
English Historical Review, 1900, p. 291.
COLMAN THE IRISHMAN P. 74
ALL that is certainly known of these verses is that they were

written by an old Irishman, Colman, to a younger of the
same name, on the eve of his journey back to Ireland.
They are in the same ninth-century MS. compiled at
Rheims (now in the British Museum) as the Pulchra comis.
Wilhelm Meyer first transcribed them in 1906 and sent the
copy to Kuno Meyer, who published it with further
emendations in Eriti, 1907.
The name Colman, Little Dove, is one of the commonest
in the early Irish church, probably because of the great
fame of St. Columba. The Martyrology of Donegal
mentions 113, says Kuno Meyer, one a Colman from
Fahan with the nickname imrama (" of the Voyage *')
whose day is July 8th, another ailithir (the pilgrim) from
Inis Mochol M6c, for November 7th. The B.M. catalogue
suggests Colman, Bishop of Lindisfarne 661-668, who came
back to Ireland and founded a monastery at Inishboffin,
with thirty men of English race and many Irishmen who
had come back with him. But there was no peace among
them, says Bede, for when the summer and the time of
303
harvest came the Irish took a desire of wandering, and
then with the cold returned home to eat those things which
their brethren had laboured in harvesting. And the con-
tention was so strong that Colman built a new monastery
for the English on die mainland, and no more is said of
the improvident grasshoppers (Hist. Eccles. iv. 4).
Kuno Meyer inclines to the ninth century and a conti-
nental source, from the date and provenance of the MS. :
there were many Irishmen in Northern France in the

beginning of the ninth century. He also suggests that
nubiferi auri (1. 32) should be nubiferi euri, in memory of
Silius Italicus, x.322, the south-east wind which would
carry the pilgrim from France to south-west England, or
for that matter to Cork itself.
The text is from MS. Royal 158 xix. f 69, with emen-
dations gratefully acknowledged to Kuno Meyer, Eriti,
1907, pp. 186-9.

The votes (1. 14) is of course Virgil, and the lines are a
mosaic of Bucolics ix. 51, Aen. v. 395, vii. 440.
ALCUIN P. 78
c. 735-604
IN 804, Alcuin, a Yorkshireman, died in his abbey of St.

Martin at Tours in his seventieth year. In the spring of
80 1, three years before his death, he had written to his old
friend the Archbishop of York, with a little present of wine,
far you and the brethren and our friends Alcuin had the
humanist's palate for wine and an un-English dislike of
beer and an entreaty that the Archbishop will not let his
reading rust, lest all my labour in collecting books be lost. The
Cathedral Library at York (the same which Bede must
have used) had been Alcuin's passion; he was librarian
304
and Master of the Schools there until Charlemagne, great
strategist that he was, persuaded him to Aachen, to put
an empire and an emperor to school. For ten years he
taught there, and at last, in 796, craved leave to retire to
his abbey in Touraine. There he still taught, not only as
to his scholar Daphnis the spiritual significance of the 600
wives and 900 concubines of Solomon, but Latin verses.
His loveliest lyric, the Cuckoo, is a lament for a vanished
"
scholar, so late begotten, and so quickly lost," who had
fallen into evil ways. He had two defections to grieve him.
One, Osulf, never came back, and the story goes that
'
Alcuin cried after him in grief, He shall die neither in this
nor yet in his own land.' Which the issue afterwards proved, for
he died in Lombardy. The other, and more like to be the
subject of his poem, did come back. He was with him in
that April of 801, and his messenger to York, still his avis
vernalis. The aforesaid fowl Alcuin's humour is always
charming and academic and absurd will tell you of my
infirmity, but glory be to God I am something better, though the
old integrity of body hath not yet returned. Pray for me : for the
time draws nigh that this hostel must be left behind and I go out
to things unknown." A little later, " As I said to the Cuckoo,
I have laid aside the pastoral care, and now sit quietly at St. Martin's,
waiting for the knocking at the gate." Not many could rise up
to answer it with a more confident heart, but his epitaph
has the wistful diffidence of all good men. The lament for
his empty cell is among his poems and in his own manner,
but more likely from the hand of his disciple Frcdugis.
The Conflictus Verts et Hiemis has been taken from him,
" The
because the line goats come to the milking, udders
full,'* is reminiscent of Horace, and it is argued that Horace
was unknown on the continent until the middle of the
ninth century, when the Irishmen wrote the MS. now at
Berne. Yet the Berne MS. must be a copy of a lost original :
and even if that original was only known in Ireland, was

305
in fact one of the books that St. Paul helped Coelchu of
Clonmacnoise to carry on the road, it is to be remembered
"
that Alcuin called Coelchu magister," and wrote him
lettersof affectionate gossip, and that he was devoted, for
other reasons besides a similar palate for wine, to Joseph
the Scot. And also that the line, however reminiscent of
Horace (which was Alcuin's self-chosen nickname) is not
beyond the range of any countryman's imagination.
Text: Dummler, Pout. Lot. Car. i.
Heu, cttculus, Carmina 57 ; Conflictus Veris et Hiemis, 58 ;

De Luscima, 61 ;
De Sancto Michaelo, 120; Epitaphium, 123.
O mea cella See also Alcuini Epistolae, 226,
(Fredugis), 23.
233: Paul von Winterfeld, Rkein. Mus. 1905, pp. 31 ff.
MS. OF MONTE GASSING P. 100
Greeting from Charlemagne's court, written before 795
IN the library at Monte Cassino there is a manuscript

written by Peter the Deacon who was librarian there in
the early years of the twelfth century. It includes a few
anonymous poems, written in another hand, but corrected
by Peter; and among them is this greeting to the brethren
at Monte
Cassino, with affectionate messages to Paul the
Deacon, who was a brother there. The tradition in the
monastery in the twelfth century was that the writer was
Charlemagne himself: and Leo of Ostia in his Cronica has
a long story of the intimacy between emperor and scholar,
and how Charlemagne in his anger at finding his scholar
still loyal to his first master, the Desiderius whom Charle-
magne had deposed from the throne of Lombardy, was for
"
blinding him, and rued, saying, But where shall I find
"
such another poet? and exiled him to an island from
306
which Paid after some years escaped, first to Beneventum
where the daughter of his old master was Duchess, and
then to Monte Cassino, where he wrote his History of the
Lombards, and died in peace: and where Charlemagne
deigned to write him verses as affectionate as these.
It is a good story, with a flavour of the Arabian Nights
about it; but contemporary documents are silent on it.
Paul called the Deacon came of a noble house of Friuli,
and was much about the court, both at Pavia and at
Beneventum, wrote poems to the Duchess there, and verses
on Lake Gomo, on the scent of its myrtles and its ever-
lasting spring. But Dcsiderius, king of Lombardy, was an
orgulous prince, and a bad neighbour to the Roman See :
Hadrian appealed to Charlemagne: the Prankish army

crossed the Alps and invested Pavia :it fell in 774. Paul
the Deacon became a monk at Monte Cassino, if indeed he
had not already gone there, though he once said the
Muses would rather have rose-gardens than the cloister.
His brother went into captivity in France, the family
property was confiscated. There were four children and
a mother at the end of six years she was begging their
:
bread, tremente ore, with quivering mouth, on the streets.

Paul himself was penniless, and in his desperation he
bethought him of a direct appeal to the lion.
It seems that he won his suit, but from a phrase in a later
letter, itwas at a price Charlemagne, who had the col-
:
lector's passion, seems to have struck a bargain with him,

the attendance of so admirable a poet at his own court.
He lived there for some years, not ungrateful, recognizing
the amazing charm of the gentle giant who held him, but
homesick for the alma tecta of the beloved Benedict, heart-
"
sick for the cloister. Tell me when you write how the
harvest went, and which of the brethren passed out from
you this year. Some one told me Nonnus was dead: if
that be so, half my bean has gone with him," At last he
307
won his release wrote the History of the Lombards, which
:
has made him famous, and died in Monte Cassino in the

Ides of April of some year unknown, leaving a legend of
consummate scholarship and great gentleness.
These are not the only verses attributed to Charlemagne,
and if it seems odd that the emperor who toiled at his slate
in the middle of the night should have been judged capable
of Latin verse, it is to be remembered that his wits were
less clumsy than his fingers, and that he was admittedly
as fluent in Latin as in his own Prankish tongue. What-
ever his own he took enormous delight in the verse-
efforts,
making of his courtiers, Paul, and Peter of Pisa, and
Angilbert and Alcuin and Theodulf, and was a shrewd
judge of the small boys' verses in the Palace School. The
suggestion that the poem was written by Alcuin in Charle-
magne's name has one piece of internal evidence, for the
homesickness of the lines on the cloister is echoed in letter
after letter written home to York.
Text in Dummler, Poetae Latini Carolini Aevi, i. p. 69.
See also Leo of Ostia, Cronica Monasterii Casinensis, i. 15.
(M.G.H. SS. vii. p. 592). Epistolae Carolini Am, ii.
pp. 506 ff. Archiv. xii. p. 502.
ANGILBERT P. 109
Fl. 841
NOTHING is known of
the writer of this amazing dirge for
the dead beyond what is evident in the poem, that his
name was Angilbert, that he fought for Lothair in the
fratricidal feud between the three sons of Louis at Fon-
tenoy in Puisaye, June 25th, 841, and that the memory of
a little farm in France turned into a reeking horror haunted
him as it has haunted other poets fighting not very far
308
from Fontenoy, but with more than ten centuries between.
The carnage seems to have been frightful satis horrendum,
:
says one chronicler, briefly but adequately. Even the

most stolid contemporaries speak of it with a kind of
shudder Regino of Prum says that it weakened the old
:
valour of France, and left it helpless against the Northmen,
who already in that year had sacked Rouen. The tenor

of the poem suggests that Lothair was the victor Charles:
and Louis claimed it, and professed themselves aggrieved

that the Emperor had failed to recognize the judgment of
God. Peace was finally made in 843 at Verdun, and the
dismemberment of Charlemagne's empire into three king-
doms with other than their natural boundaries began,
Louis the German being given districts on either side the
Rhine for the sake of the vineyards, and the Emperor that
fatal strip along the Rhine valley where the dragon's teeth
are sown.
Text in Dummler, Poet. Lat. Car. ii. p. 137. The poem
is found set to music, extremely sorrowful, in a tenth-
century MS. of St. Martial of Limoges, now in Paris
(B.N. MS. Lat. 1 1 54) .See the facsimile in Coussemaker,
Histoire de Vharmonie au moyen dgc, pi. i-iv.
It also exists in a late ninth-century MS. of Farfa, now
at St. Gall, written by a ruder hand, probably before the
Saracens swept down on the great monastery and made
it their stronghold.
HRABANUS MAURUS P. 106
776-856
THE Blessed Alcuin had a weakness for giving nicknames.

Besides the famous circle at court, David and Homer and
Pindar, he called his friend the Bishop of Arno his Venerable
309
Fowl: and when Hrabanus came to Tours from Fulda to
study the humanities, he called him Maurus, after Bene-
dict's beloved disciple. Hrabanus came back to serve his
own monastery as scholasticus and later, in 822, as abbot:
an omnivorous reader and a voluminous writer, a good deal
"
worried by administration seeing that these young ones
have enough to eat is a great hindrance to one's reading,"
said he ruefully, and when the crash of his Emperor's
fortunes in 842 made him resign his abbacy, it was not
without secret jubilation that he settled with his books into
a cell on the mountain side near the church of St. Peter.
"
Lothair agreed with him the country quiet of the hills,"
:
"
he said, is for the
better than the
spirit of men."
jangling
He had seven years of it, to read the poets and Holy Writ
and finish his vast De Universe : then the new ruler, Louis
the German, always eager for the friendship of this obstinate
and loyal scholar, persuaded him from his retreat to the
archiepiscopal see of Mainz, the town where he was born.
He was consecrated in 847, ruled mightily for nine years ;
in three successive synods dealt with the incorrigible heretic
Gottschalk; and himself died in 856, the greatest arch-
"
bishop since Boniface. If God," said Lothair once,
"
gave my predecessors in empire Jerome and Augustine
and Ambrose, he gave me Hrabanus."
The story of his lifelong struggle with Gottschalk
literally lifelong, for the boy had been brought as a mere
child to the monastery by his knightly father, and grew
up in wild rebellion is too long to tell: it has the full
cruelty of the struggle between two uncompromising
idealists. Gottschalk was broken, in all but his spirit;
yet from those broken strings came the most poignant lyric
melody in Europe. Beside it, Hrabanus' verse is harsh and
brazen: it is only now and then, as in the sudden con-
fession to his old friend Grimold, abbot of St. Gall and
perhaps the kindliest figure of his time, that one sees his
310
human weakness and his
self-distrust. His faith was
absolute, self-condemning, and passionate: he saw the
" " of "
sulphurous stagnant pools hell, the incense-
bearing fields of Paradise," and for sole hope of men,
Deus immensae bonitatis, the huge kindliness of God. To
faith such as this, heresy is more cruel than any purgatorial
pain, and Gottschalk's heresy, the predestination of souls

to damnation as well as to grace, was cruel enough. If
Hrabanus could endure the sight of a man flogged into
denying the truth as he saw it, and burning half-dead the
book in which he had written it, he was fighting as best
he knew the first menace of the Calvinism that was later
to drive men insane. Moreover, it is difficult to think
harshly of so great a lover of books and when it came to
:
his own prayers, the Oratio Mauri ad Deum is as wistful and
despairing as Gottschalk's own.

Text in Poet. Lat. Car. ii. Ad Grimoldum^ Carm. vi. Ad
Eigilum, Carm, xxi. See also Migne, 107. 20, 26.
WALAFRID STRABO P. no
809-849
IN the late summer of 849, Walafrid Strabo, abbot of

Reichenau and certainly the ripest scholar of his years in
Europe, came into France on an embassy to his old pupil,
Charles the Bald. Meantime a young student of his went
from Reichenau across the lake to St. Gall, while his master
should be absent. The Abbot Grimold, who had fathered
Walafrid in the quick promise of his youth, was very
gracious with the boy who was Walafrid's pupil Ermenric
:
wrote afterwards how kindly they took him from the boat,
and how gentle the brethren were. Two men especially
"
he noted, whose spirits were lit candles, and if the light
MEDIJEVAL LATIN LYRICS
of the one blazed the brighter, the other burnt more
slowly and therefore the longer." He was still at St. Gall
when the news was brought that the maxima lux, the light
of his own abbey, had gone out ;
"
Left thy beloved, thou that wert most beloved,
O Walafrid, that art beneath this ground."
He "
died, crossing the thirsty sands of the Loire," says
one epitaph, and because ever since Orpheus came drifting
" Down the swift
Hebrus to the Lesbian shore,"
it has seemed a fitting end for poets, it is hazarded that he
was drowned at the ford. They brought him back from

" "
the Loire valley to Reichenau, to those low roofs that
had sheltered his poverty-stricken youth.
Walafrid *s genius had flowered early. His Visio Wettinis
was written in curious anticipation of Dante, from a story
he had taken down himself from the lips of a dying brother
at Reichenau he was barely eighteen when he finished it,
:
and dedicated it to Grimold. For Grimold, the great

Prankish noble who was Louis' Chancellor and for thirty
years Abbot of St. Gall, was one of those generous natures
that are the enriching of many men's lives and leave small
record of their own. His only monument is the library at
St. Gall they have still two leaves of his own Virgil there
and a few scattered references, dedications, letters in
verse, from the men he befriended,
"... anchor of weary ships

Safe shore and land at last, thou, for my wreck."
It seems to have been his urgency that sent Walafrid to
Fulda, where he was bitterly cold and woefully homesick,

and where Hrabanus made him as massive a scholar as
himself; nature had already made him a finer poet. But
it was Grimold who had his heart, and when after some
312
years at court as tutor to young Charles he came in 838,
this time as abbot, to Reichenau, and made his garden
there, it was to Grimold that he sent his book Of Gardening,

and wrote what is perhaps the most famous dedication in
mediaeval Latin. The weight of Hrabanus' approval would
lie heavy on the greater work, the apparatus criticus of Holy
Writ that went into several editions even in the seven-

teenth century; but he would have been apt to trample
on the viridissima rutae siluula ceruleae, the tiny sea-green
forest of rue that spread in the shadow of the abbey trees.
Yet it is Walafrid's Hortulus that still is green, while the
"
volumes of the Glossa Ordinaria do but gather dust. He
was utterly simple," said Ermcnric: and the tragedy of
his early death is the myrrh that embalms his memory.
Hrabanus, now sixty-three and Archbishop of Mainz,

composed the epitaph for the grave of his finest scholar.
It is stiffly written, as was Hrabanus' wont, and intricate
with reminiscences of the poets : it commends the faithful
abbot, the admirable poet, the devout student of Holy
Writ. Then at the last a sudden vivid memory of the
dead man's charm came upon him, and where Fortunatus
had written noster et dtus amor, his heart wrote almus
"
Gentle, beloved, Death took you from us young."
The text of Walafrid's poems edited by Dummlcr in

is
Poet. Lat. Car. ii. The sapphics on Reichenau (written

surely not to Hrabanus, as Dummlcr suggests, but to
Grimold) are from Carm. 75 : De Cultora Hortorum, Cam,
4 (27): Ad Amicum, Carm. 59. See also the Epistola
Ermenriciad Grimoldum, edited by Diimmler, 1873: the
epitaph by Hrabanus, P.L.C. ii. p. 239 and an anonymous
:
epitaph (from a MS. in the Bodleian), ib. p. 423.
313
SEDULIUS SCOTTUS P. 118
F/. 848-874
THERE is at Berne a Greek text of the Epistles of St. Paul
with an interlinear Latin translation, believed to be in the
actual handwriting of Sedulius: there is a commentary
on the Psalms, also to his credit, and another on St. Jerome,
with a political treatise De Rectoribus Christianis, written in
admirable Latin: his friend the Irishman Gruindmelus
acknowledged his collaboration in an Art of Poetry. Alto-
gether, scholarship profound enough to ballast any craft;
and undoubtedly Sedulius carried a good deal of sail.
Nothing is known of his earlier life in Ireland, or whether
itwas the dread of the Danes or simply what Walafrid
" "
Strabo once called the Irish fashion of going away
that brought him to France. In 843, a mission came from
Ireland to Charles the Bald, and Traubc thinks that
Sedulius may have been attached to it. However, it was
lessin the guise of ecclesiastical dignitaries than of vagantes
that Sedulius and two of his friends arrived, tattered with
wind and sodden with sleet, at the hospitable gates of the
Mcht at Liege. That Hartgar in entertaining them was
"
entertaining learned grammarians and pious priests,"
he had Sedulius' word: and he was scholar enough to
recognize the first, and had perception enough to believe
the second. Sedulius stayed on at Lige as schoiasticus in
the cathedral schools wrote odes of welcome to visiting
:
kings and emperors: had his verses embroidered by the

empress Ermengard (she died in childbirth in 851, so that
Sedulius must have been settled in Li6ge before that year) :
wrote lovely lyrics for Christmas and for Easter, and
swinging saturated songs as he called them
"
Doth not the cork, redolent of balsam,
Suffer the piercing of the iron corkscrew,
Whence from the fissure floweth out a precious
"
Drop of the liquor?
to Count Eberhard of Friuli and to Rodbert, to the depletion
of their cellars and the replenishing of his own. Count
"
Robert, the golden hope of our Muse," gave him twenty-
five dozen once, and got in reply a lyric that still reads a
little drunk. That he continually grumbles is only to be
expected of a classical scholar, and of his nation, and to do
him justice he made his grumblings comical. He did not
like the east wind, nor leaks in his roof, nor draughts:
and, in this resembling the Emperor Julian in the same
region of the Meuse, he did not like the local beer, which
was, he said, a beast of prey in a philosopher's inwards.
But he was as hearty in his gratitude as in his grumbling,
and as sincere in his repentance as he was joyous in his
sinning. The monastery of Stavelot that kept the -single
manuscript of his verse that has come down to us kept also
the Archpoet's: and their souls likewise are garnered in
one place.
The text of the poems is edited by Traube in Poet. Lat.
Car. iii. The
Easter poem, addressed to Tado, archbishop
of Milan, Carmina iii. 2. 11. 17-26: the intercession against
the plague, ii. 46 : the complaint of thirst in spring, ii. 49 :
his apologia, ii. 74. For his life, the best authority is in the
poems: but see also Traube, Abhandlungen d. Kgl. Bayr.
Akad. (Munich, 1891), pp. 339 ff.; Pirenne, Mimoires
couronnis d* VAcadtmie Royale de Belgique, 1882; Hellmann,
Sedulius Scottus (Munich, 1906) ; Jarcho, Die Vorl&ufer des
Golias, in Speculum, 1928, pp. 523 ff.
315
THE ABBOT OF ANGERS P. 126
JVfciM Century
No language can be so gravely impish as mediaeval Latin,

and the clerks saw it early. One of the first exercises of
their peculiar faculty is the Cena Cypriani, apparently based
on St. Zeno's first communion addresses, in which, like
many a great preacher since, he pictured the Holy Table
stretching backwards into remote antiquity, with patriarchs
9
and saints as commensales. Cyprian s Feast is a lively account
of one such banquet, attended by most of the great ones
from the Old and New Testaments, unfortunately recog-
nizable their less creditable peculiarities.
by It was not a
wholly successful entertainment, inasmuch as Jonah proved

" "
a bad mixer (male miscuerat), Noah sat nodding, very
drunk, Jacob was observed to be drinking out of his neigh-
bour's glass as well as his own, John would drink nothing
but water, and Tobit tried to leave early. Even the pompa,
in which Adam came on as a gardener and Eve as a member
of the ballet (exodiana), and Herod in character, was
interrupted by the host's discovery that something had
been stolen, and an inquisition out of which John
the Baptist and St. Paul emerged with not unblemished
characters, and Adam lost his job. All this, however, was
a fine aid to memory, like the rhymes in the older Latin
grammars : and Hrabanus himelf recommended it as such
to Lothair II.
The Cena Cypriani was written by a certain John the
Deacon : no one knows who wrote The Abbot of Angers.
It isfound in a ninth-century anthology at Verona, among
verse for the most part godly. The metre is a trochaic
line of eleven syllables, to be used again in the oldest
Provencal alba, tenth century, and by William of Poitott
in the eleventh it had been used, as W. P. Ker points out,
:
316
in the Lorica of Gildas of the sixth century, and is one of
the famous Irish metres. Yet to claim it as the work of
an Irish wandering scholar, some less respectable country-
man of Scdulius, would be rash. The sons of Golias, the
genial Pantagruelian prelate who bestrides the Middle
Ages, had but one fatherland, terra ridentium, the country of
the laughing.
Text in Poet. Lai. Car. iv. 591. For the Cena, sec ib.
857 ff. :
Novati, Studi critici, pp. 1 78 ff.
RADBOD P. 130
d. 917
RADBOD, the son of a noble Prankish house, was brought

up by his uncle Gunther, Archbishop of Cologne, to whom
an wandering scholar once addressed a flattering
Irish
poem and wrote the rough draft on a blank page of his

MS. of Priscian, where it abides to this day in St. Gall.
Gunther was generous to vagabonds, but too sympathetic
with human infirmity: he was deposed with the papal
anathema, and his young nephew betook himself to the
court of Charles the Bald, who had revived the tradition
of Charlemagne's palace school, and thence to study under
the Abbot Hugh of St. Martin's at Tours. In 899 he was
elected Bishop of Utrecht, and consecrated in the following
year. It was a troubled episcopate, for the irruption and
devastation of the Danes drove him finally to Daventcr;
yet his memory remained at Utrecht in affection and
reverence. He had that real austerity that dissembles
itself in pleasantry: abstemious at table, but so gay in his
speech that no man observed it A
friend of his, a layman,
began however to suspect the contents of the great onyx
goblet, adorned with gold, from which the Bishop drank,
and asked leave to taste them, to the great confusion of
the good man, who drank only water, but would not have
it known, thinking it next to vice to parade a virtue. So
he put off his friend with some excuse, but the importunate,
still more
inquisitive, watched his opportunity and took a
mouthful by stealth: and thereby gave occasion to the
kindliness of God, Who, perceiving the embarrassment of
His servant, changed the water to a wine of singular
bouquet. In a grave illness, the bishop was visited by the
Blessed Virgin herself, with her two companions, Agnes
and Thekla. Death came for him in the marshy country
near Drenthe, a fever that burnt him out he died, joyous
:
and innocent as he had lived, with the Laete of his own

antiphon in praise of the Blessed Martin upon his lips.
Texts edited by Paul von Winterfeld, Poet. Lat. Car.
iv. pp. 161-2, 172-3. For the life, sec Mon. Germ. Hist.
Scriplores, xv. 568 ff. The Zwendebold of whom he speaks
in his epitaph was king of Lorraine, and illegitimate son of
Arnulf, one of the last of Charlemagne's house.
EUGENIUS VULGARIUS P. 136
Fl. c. 907
VERY little is known of Eugenius Vulgarius except what
can be deduced from his writings, that he was a timid and

eager scholar devoted to Seneca, dreaming of a revival of
learning that he did not live to see, an age of gold when
Charlemagne would again be glorious, and Cato tell his
tales and Apollo sing, and Seneca rehearse all splendid
deeds, and Cicero speak with that organ voice again:

that he took the losing side in a papal quarrel, wrote a
vigorous and, academic pamphlet, and fled ignominiously
for shelter when the great cat spied him in his corner and
reached out its claws.
Pope Formosus, in defence of whose dead majesty

Vulgarius ventured for a short moment out of his obscurity,
was the last great figure to occupy the Roman Sec before
the squalid and ephemeral succession of the tenth-century
popes. He had favoured Arnulf, one of the last princes of
Charlemagne's house, in his claim to the Holy Roman
Empire, as against the ducal house of Spoleto, too near
and too violent a neighbour to the papal states ; welcomed
him when he invaded Italy in 896, and crowned him
Emperor in Rome, in despite of the young duke Lambert
and his deadly mother, Ageltrude. But Arnulf 's luck was
not with him. He was stricken by paralysis on the road to
Spoleto, and drearily returned. A few days later, For-
mosus, now an old man of eighty, himself was dead.
Boniface VI, who succeeded him, was disposed of by
poison in a fortnight: but Stephen VII, a personal enemy
of Formosus, lent himself willingly to Ageltrude's ven-
geance. The dead Pope was exhumed, clad in his papal
vestments and enthroned over against his enemy: formal
trial was made, his consecration annulled, his body dis-
honoured, buried in the strangers' graveyard, and thence

flung into the Tiber. All ordinations made by him were
declared invalid, with what resultant satisfaction of petty
greeds and local jealousies may be imagined. There was a
swift reaction Stephen was taken prisoner and strangled,
:
and in 898, John IX, another of the short-lived popes,

had the poor body, which the piety of some fishermen had
rescued from the river, rcinterred with all honour, and
the findings of the ghastly trial reversed. But in 904,
Scrgius IV, an inveterate enemy of the Formosan party,
again declared the consecration invalid. The whole
question of the validity of orders arose, and in 907 poor
Vulgarius took a hand in the quarrel, possibly because
319
Stephen, Bishop of Naples (who may have been his own
bishop) was involved. Non est sequax Petri, si non habeai
meritom illius Petri (He is not Peter's successor who hath
not Peter's deserving) said Vulgarius boldly, thereby
enunciating a principle that might well have shaken Chris-
tendom. It shook Scrgius, who may have felt that he had
little of Peter's merit. Vulgarius seems to have been
ordered to a cell at Monte Gassino, and then, after a brief
interval of quiet, summoned to Rome, which reduced him
"
to the last extremity of terror. The fear of death," said
"
he, quoting Seneca, is itself," and he
worse than death
wrote a quavering letter to Sergius' paternity. What
should such a thing as he do, creeping beneath the feet of
"
such great ones? Behold, my corner pleaseth me well."
Sergius seems to have felt that there was no further risk
from that quarter, and let him be there are shrill odes in
:
praise of his magnificence. It is not an heroic story, but

it is dangerous for mice to investigate the workings of the
grindstones, and once at least his very defects, the scholar's

timidity and wistfulness and anger at all the waste and
cruelty of things, goaded him to a fragment of great and
passionate verse.
Text in Poet. Lat. Car. iv. p. 433. See also Dftmmler,
Auxilius und Vvlgaris Luitprand, Antapodosis, i.
(1866).
28-31. Cf. the Pope's soliloquy in Browning's The Ring
and the Book.
ALBA P. 138
Tenth Century
THE manuscript Vatican Reg. 1462, a kind of dictionary

of legal abbreviations, was written in the tenth century,
and came with the Queen Christine MSS. to Rome. But
320
its fame depends on three verses, exquisitely written in a
tiny hand, though also of the tenth century, at the top right-
hand corner of the generous margin. It is the first alba,
the dawn-song to waken sleeping lovers,

" "
Oi, deus ! oi deus ! de T alba, tant tost vc !
and the refrain is one of the oldest fragments of Provencal,

or of North Italy, for it is claimed for both. The hand-
writing is no clue, and the fact that the MS. is a legal one
points as much to the secular schools of Northern Italy
as to Fleury, to which the MS. was for some time ascribed.
Some claim the tenebras for Mt. Tinibras of the Alpes
Maritimes, and others that the difficult bigil is Vigil above
Merano.
The from the facsimile in E. Monaci, Facsimili di
text is
Antichi MSS.
(1892), p. 57. See also Monaci, Rendiconti
della Rede Accademia dei Lined (1892), pp. 475-487: W. P.
Kcr, The Dark Ages, 214.
ST. MICHAEL P. 140
Tenth Century
THIS fragment of a sequence in honour of St. Michael is

from the same tenth-century troper of St. Martial of
Limoges (B.N. Lat. 1118) that holds 7am dulcis arnica.
Text in Dreves, Analtcta Hymnica Medii Aevi, vii. p. 195,
stanzas 6, 7.
VESTIUNT SILVE P. 142
Tenth Century
THIS poem appears in very corrupt text in two manuscripts,

a tenth-century MS. of Verona (Bibl. Cap. 88, f. 59*),
and an eleventh-century MS. now in Cambridge, that
formerly belonged to the monastery of St. Augustine at
Canterbury. The latter has been edited with a facsimile
text by Professor Breul in The Cambridge Songs (1913), and
again with full critical notes and variants by Strcckcr,

Die Cambridger Lieder (1926). It is one of the most im-
portant anthologies of gayer mediaeval verse, and Professor
Breul 's conjecture that it was the song-book of some wander-
ing scholar of the Rhine valley, copied by an English
traveller in the Rhineland, or at Canterbury itself, is very
agreeable. The handwriting continental minuscule, with
is
some Anglo-Saxon letters. The contents are an odd

medley, fragments from Statius and Horace and Virgil,
laments for dead emperors and bishops (of Treves, Cologne,
Mainz), sequences for Easter and for St. Catharine, the
patron saint of scholars, the song to the Nightingale and
the admirable comedy of the Abbot John from Fulbert of
" "
Chartres, the famous admirabile Veneris idolum from
Verona, the impish fabliau of the Snowchild, the pious if
also impish talc of the Abbess and the donkey, and half a
dozen love songs, blackened with gall and scratched thin
with the knife of some austere brother of St. Augustine's.
But the Vestiunt silvae escaped him as harmless, redeemed
as it was from vanity by the pious allegory of the last stanza.
Already in the tenth century there is the kind of relaxing

that one notes in the branches of the trees in February,
inclining a little to the earth. Wipo the Presbyter who
was born towards the end of it was a good ecclesiastic, but
his proverb on the Love of the World to Come,
Si career tolls > Deus, tua mansio qualis ?

" "
If such Thy prison, Lord, what is Thy house of heaven ?
is in the tradition of the humanists rather than the saints.
The text here given is a very unsatisfactory mosaic,

322
pieced from the facsimile MS., and the texts of Strecker
and Breul.
1. i. merorem is Haupt's emendation for the Cambridge
merorum: Verona has, very reasonably, ramorum.
1.
7. arridens is Jaffe's suggestions for the Cambridge
arripens: Verona has arripiens.

1.
Haupt's emendation for the Cambridge
13. in auris is
in aeris Verona has per agros, but the sense is evidently the
:
contrast between the lark's song in the high air and the
very evident change in note as the downward flight begins.
1. 1 8. fringultit, Haupt's emendation for the Cambridge
gracellaris ultat, from analogy with the poem on the voices
of birds in Anthologia Latina, 762, 1. 28.
1.
23. Dr. Montagu James suggests that the uncom-
fortably long line is due to a scribe incorporating the
explanatory gloss Maria written above the quae of his
original. His emendation is
nisi quae Christum baiulavit alvo.
IAM DULCIS AMIGA P. 144
Tenth Century
THIS first anticipation of Marlowe's Come live with me and

be my love is the most famous and perhaps the oldest of the
earlier mediaeval love songs. It survives in three different
musical settings: a tenth-century Vienna MS. (Cod.
Vind. 1 1 6), formerly from Salzburg; the Cambridge MS*
from St. Augustine of Canterbury; and a tenth-century
MS. of St. Martial of Limoges, written during the reign
of Hugh Capet (987-996), as is evident from the prayer
" now
for Hugonc a Deo coronato," and in Paris (B.N.
Lat. 1 1 1
8) . This last is a troper, remarkable for the beauty
3*3
of its notation and rough drawings of various musical
its
instruments. The two verses, where the smouldering

last
coal breaks into flame, were omitted from the Limoges
manuscript, and so it came that the good Dreves included
it in his AnaUcta Hymnica, believing it, as Mr. Gaselee notes
"
with very kindly malice, in innocence
the of his
heart,
to be a hymn to the Blessed Virgin, drawing much of its
imagery from the Song of Songs." One of these dangerous
verses was mutilated by the same hand that defaced the
love-songs in theCambridge MS. It is perhaps the hap-
"
piest airfrom what Mr. Gaselee calls the double flute
"
of Ovid and the Song of Songs but compared with the
:
sudden liquid break of
Ego fid sola in silva,
the rest of the poem has the shabbiness of last year's nests.
Text in Breul, op. cit. pp. 16, 64. See also Strecker,
of>. cit. p. 69, and Coussemaker, Histoire de rharmonie au
moyen dge, pi. viii. ix.
HERIGER, BISHOP OF MAINZ P. 148
MS. of the eleventh century
HERIGER was Archbishop of Mainz from 913 to 927 and :
whether or not this story is apocryphal, it suggests the fine

sardonic humour that befits a great ecclesiastic. Rabelais
might have written it, and would have chosen a form not
so very different. Du M6ril suggests that the metre recalls
the brief lines of old German poetry, linked by alliteration:
and that the Latin version is possibly later than a popular
song on the same subject. The " very thick woods " of
this traveller's tale are as old as the search for Balder in
the Scandinavian hell: and in Dante's Inferno there is la
3H
dolorosa of gnarled and poisoned trees. There is
selva
evidently a stanza lacking in which the prophet described

St. Peter as magister coquorwn, which was a charge of no
small honour at a Prankish court.
The text is from Strecker, Die Cambridger Lieder, p. 65.
See Du M&il, Poesies populaires anttritures au XII* siicle, 298 ff.
LEVIS EXSURGIT ZEPHYRUS P. 156
MS. of the eleventh century
THE only text of this lyric is in the MS. of St. Augustine :

its sorrowfulness may have saved it from the gall that
defaced the other love-songs. It is like nothing else in
mediaeval Latin. Most of the goliard songs are masculine,
either mocking or pleading, and the famous fourteenth-
century Nun's complaint is the vigorous protest of one who
was of no nun's flesh and knew it. This has the wistfulness
of early German Minnesong. In the Capitulary of Charle-
magne of 789, it was prescribed that no abbess should allow
her nuns to write or send wini leodas, love-songs.
The text is in Strecker, op. cit. p. 95. On wini leodas see
Lot, Archil). Med. Lot., 1925, 102 ff.
SIGEBERT OF GEMBLOUX P. 158
c. 1030-1112
THERE were two places in Europe in the eleventh century

where the Latin lyric metres were written with ease and
pleasure: in Salerno and Li6ge. Sigebert came in his
youth to the monastery at Gembloux, near Lilge, where
Oibert whom he greatly loved was abbot he left it at his :
master's death to go to St. Vincent's, and be master of

3*5
the schools at Metz. All men liked him, says the admiring
"
disciple who wrote his life, even the Jews," because he
was interested in Hebrew, and had long talks with them
about St. Jerome's translation from the Hebrew, not the
LXX. But, finally, ut apis prudentissima y ad monastmi sui
alvearia, returning as a wise bee to his own monastic hive, he
came back to the house of his youth, and there abode till
his death. There he taught " me and many my betters,"
says the same disciple and always there was an air about
:
him " of antique knowledge and reverence." A moderate

man in all things, even in practice of austerity " a discreet
:
mediocrity," was his aim, says the biographer, not realizing

how good a phrase he had come upon, nor that it perhaps
explained why his master was so great a lover of Horace.
He lived to be very old and frail, but his mind lost nothing
of its edge and when the time of his death drew near, the
:
brethren took counsel as to whether they might not bury

him in the monastery itself, presumably in the church,
that they might keep their scholar : but he, disliking ostenta-
tion or anything that might seem particular, begged to lie
with his brethren in the graveyard and it was done. His
:
fame is rather for his Chronicles than his poetry he was

:
an exact historian, careful in his use of sources, and meticu-

lous in stating them. But it is in the
poems that his
personality escapes, a lover of and of open air and
fields
of walking, and alive to the greatness of lives more heroic
and passionate than his. His St. Lucy was inspired by the
presence of the holy relics at Metz, the last stage of their
long journey from Sicily, but the Martyrdom of the Theban
Legion, the patron saints of his monastery, has the same
generous passion for the unnamed dead that moved
" "
Prudentius, kneeling before the unnumbered ashes of
the martyrs in Rome.
The text of Hinc virginalis sanctafrequenUa is in Diimmler's
edition of the Passio Sanctae Luciae, stanzas 16, 17, ,19
326
(Abhandl. d. Kgl Akad., Berlin, Philo.-hist. Klasse, 1893),
written in alcaics, as Sigebert himself noted; Conatus
reseat, the epilogue of the Passio Sanctorum Thebearum,
11. 1054-1077, in heroics, also edited by Dummler. For
his life sec M.G.H. SS. vi. pp. 268 ff.
PETER ABELARD P. 162
1079-1142
NOTHING is left of all the verse that Abelard wrote for

Heloisc and set to airs so lovely that even the unlettered
knew his name. Long after, when the tempest was quiet
and she was abbess of the Paraclete, she wrote to him,
begging that he would write hymns for her sisterhood to
sing. He was for a long time opposed to it, saying that it
seemed to him almost sacrilege to prefer new-fangled
hymns of sinful men to the venerable rhythms of the saints,
but with many reasons, such as uncertainty of ascription,
and the unaptness of some of the older measures to the
tune, and the lack on certain high-days of any hymn at
all, she prevailed on him, and he wrote the collection of
ninety-three hymns, which forms part of the Breviary of

the Paraclete. Solus ad victimam (Alone to sacrifice Thou
goest, Lord) is the supreme expression of his faith, and of
that theory of the Atonement which his century branded
as heresy, and which is the beginning of modern theology.
The lament of David for Jonathan belongs to another
collection, found by Grcith in the Vatican and published
by him in his Spicilegium Vaticanum in 1830. There are six
in all, the lament of Dinah for her ruined lover, questioning
ifthe urgency of love might not be a kind of sanctification
for the fault ; the lament of Jacob for his sons ; of the
daughters of Israel for Jephthah's daughter dead in her

327
virginity, with its strange likeness to the Heloise whom he
had forced to take the veil: the lament of Israel over
Samson, with its sudden arrest at the abyss of the judg-
ments of God ; of David over Abner, destroyed by guile ;
and greatest of all, the lament for Jonathan, where the

passion that never escaped in those strange remote letters
to Heloise for once awakes and cries.
Texts in Dreves, P. Abelardi hymnarius Paraclitensis (Paris,
1891), pp. 62, 65. The Planctus is in Meyer, Romardsche

Forschungen, 1890, p. 433, 11.
73-92, 105-110. See also
Carnandet, Notice sur le brlviairt d'Abailard (1852).
THE ARCHPOET P. 170
Died c. 1165
ALL that is known of the Archpoct is a matter of inference

and deduction from his meagre bundle of ten poems. He
travelled light, even toFortunately his
immortality.
patron, Reginald von Dassel, Archbishop of Cologne and
Chancellor to Frederick Barbarossa, was a figure massive
and splendid enough to kindle Otto von Freisingen's
imagination, and from the time that Reginald came on
his first embassy to the Pope till his death of the plague
before Rome in the fatal campaign of 1167, the record is
clear and full. Not full enough, however, to include the
coinings and goings of a rather disreputable figure, keen as
a razor and lean as a hawk, with the Chancellor's own
cloak hugged about his tatters and his narrow consumptive
shoulders.
That up to the Chancellor during his
figure first sidled
mission to Rome, maH^g unflattering comments on the
parsimony of Italian and indicating that it
ecclesiastics,
also was an exile in Italy, and had a bad cough and a rapid
328
pulse. One next finds it swaggering in the Chancellor's
cloak in the refectory of some Alpine monastery, but not
above taking up a collection from the brethren. There-
after he seems more or less permanently attached, if either
word can be used of so volatile a spirit, to the Chancellor's
train, invery high feather, with a fine horse, and money
to spend, and the Emperor himself applauding one of his
songs. There is a dreadful moment of disgrace, thanks to
some scandal about a wench, and for a while the Archpoet

isagain on the road, trutannizans and hankering sadly. A
sheer tour deforce of penitent rhyming melts the Chancellor's
displeasure into laughter ; but there is some talk of making
the Archpoet respectable, and giving him a profession,
medicine for instance, at Salerno. So the Archpoet trundles
obediently down south, but in a few months is back again,
leaner and more disreputable than ever, burnt out with
fever, and quite resolute against further pursuit of his
studies. The year 1165 finds him undismayed in the
infirmary of St. Martin's cloister at Cologne, detailing his

symptoms with the old relish, and balancing with the old
airiness, but this time on eternity. It had no terrors for
him: had not Augustine chatted with him about the
nature of universals on the occasion of his last visit to
heaven, and Michael meeting him on his way out talked
to him as man to man? True, he was sorry to miss Homer
and Aristotle there. Meantime, the Abbot is his good
shepherd, and whoever comes short, for him there is no
stint in the wine. With that the darkness swallows him,
and the Archpoet becomes what he has been ever since in
literature, a reckless and gallant ghost.
It is on the Confcssio, however, that his reputation rests.
It is one of the hardiest things in mediaeval literature, the
firstarticulate reasoned rebellion against the denying of
the body, though a few years earlier Bernard Sylvcstris
had been teaching something of its dignity at Tours. The
Y 329
Confessio was written at Pavia, whose university celebrated
its eleventh centenary in May 1925, in commemoration of
its founding by Lothair, under Dungal the Irishman, as
centre of the minor schools of Lombardy. It was already

three hundred years in existence when Reginald made it
occasional headquarters during the years of the breaking
of Milan, and the Gaudeamus igitur that rings at dusk
through most old university towns was here more insistent
than the Angelus. Reginald, for all his youth and mag-
nificence, was a stern ascetic "he showed no mercy to
:
" for lust or for default" At

himself," says Otto, Vienne,
the Archpoet had had to fly his presence: here, he chal-
lenged his accusers and turned at bay.
The result of it was the poem that created a literary kind
in Europe, and is the greatest drinking song in the world.
It is the first defiance by the artist of that society which it
is his thankless business to amuse: the first cry from the
"
hast thou made me thus?
"
House of the Potter, Why
For the text, see Manillas, Die Gedichte des Arckipoeta
(1913). See also Schmeidier, Die Gedichte des Arckipoeta
(1911) : Grimm, Gedichte des Mittelalters auf Ktimg Friedrich
den Siaufer (Kleinere Schriften, iii.
1844).
MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN P. 184
Carmina Burana
THIS manuscript, the most famous anthology of mediaeval

lyric yet discovered, was found in the Hof-Bibliothek at
Munich in the beginning of the last century it had come:
there with other flotsam after the dissolution of the

monastery of Bencdictbcucrn in Upper Bavaria. Even
there, it had never appeared in the library catalogue, but
seems to have lived a kind of stowaway existence, bidden
330
to save it from the censor's gall. The handwriting is of
the thirteenth century ; forty-three of the poems are noted
to be sung. It was not a commonplace book, growing by
haphazard jottings, but a copy made by three distinct

hands and at one time, from various originals, one of them
evidently a scholar's song-book. In the judgment of its
latest editors, the manuscript was written in Bavaria,
possibly in Benedictbeuern, towards the close of the
century. The contents were roughly grouped, the smaller
and graver section including complaints on fortune, attacks
on simony, for the unbeneficed have always been harsh
with the beneficed, recruiting songs for the Crusades,
"
Man, have pity upon God,"
a paean on the ending of the schism in 1 177, a lament for
the terrible defeat in Palestine in 1187, and for the death
of Richard Cceur-de-Lion in 1 199 : at the end of the MS.,
two plays, for Christmas and for Easter, a good deal more
elaborate than those which the vagabond Hilarius took
about with him in the earlier half of the twelfth century.
The other and by far the more famous group is a collection
of love-songs, drinking songs, songs in praise of the vaga-
bond order, a very profane Gamblers' Mass, and a few
begging songs, one very neat, with a blank left as in the
catechism for the name of the person addressed, Decus JV.,
as who should say,
" O
Pride of Coventry," or Canter-
bury, or Cologne, or Salzburg. As for provenance, the
"shaping spirit" is German, and the German lyrics
scattered through it have the freshness of young beech
leaves: the Latin lyrics belong to the scholars' common-
wealth, of Paris and Orleans and Oxford, Bologna and
Salerno and Pavia. Fragments from the Copa and from
Ovid with songs from Hugh of Orleans, from the
jostle
Archpoet, from Walther von dor Vogelweide, from Gautier
dc Chatillon, possibly from Abelard himself: but most of
331
them are anonymous, htrrenlos as the German has it, like
their authors masterless men.
For the wandering clerks,
like the Latin tongue, knew no frontiers: "Swift and
unstable as the swallows . hither, thither, like a leaf
. .
caught up by the wind or a spark in the brushwood, we

wander, unweariedly weary."
Yet diverse as the authors are, the book has a unity, as
though scattered drops of quicksilver had come together,
and the figure that emerges from it is oddly familiar. The
background of their century, Barbarossa and Thomas
Becket, the second Henry and the second Frederick, Paris
University and Chartres Cathedral dissolve and pass
"
indistinct, As water is in water," just as in the half-
melancholy wizardry of the last scene in Twelfth Night the
Duke and the lovers, the priest and the Puritan go by, and
leave only
'
Mimus whistling to his tabouret,'
"A great while ago the world began,

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain."
But here there is no melancholy, and very little of the

wind and rain
In taberna quando stttnus
Jion curamus quid sit humus.
It seems not possible that poetry should be so gay as this.

These poets are young, as Keats and Shelley and Swinburne
never were young, with the youth of wavering branches
and running water. They do not look before and after,
they make light of frozen thawings and of ruined springs,
and if they came in the end to write their Ecclcsiastcs, the
man who compiled this anthology has kept record only of
their youth*
The MS. was clumsily edited by Schmellcr in his Car-
mm Burana (Stuttgart, 1847), but a critical text by Alfons
Hilka and Otto Schumann is in preparation, of which the
33*
MEDIEVAL LATW LYRICS
first two
sections are already available (Carmina Burana,
hrsg. A. Hilka and O. Schumann, Bde. i, 2. Winter,

Heidelberg, 1930). See also F. Liicrs, Die deutschen Lieder
der Carmina Burana (Bonn, 1922); Wilhelm Meyer, Frag-
menta Burana (Festschrift der KgL Gesellsch. zu Gottingen,
. . .
Abhandl. philo-hist. Klasse, 1901); Ulich and Manitius,

Vagantenlieder aus der lateinischen Dichtung des 12. und 13.
Jakrhunderts (Jena, 1927).
P. 184. Potatores exquisiti (To you, consummate drinkers).

Text in Carmina Burana, 179, p. 240. The mixing of
wine with water was anathema in vagabond verse:
and a tractate which Primas of Cologne made against
itwas a great favourite with Philip, Archbishop of
Ravenna.
P. 1 88. Fas et
Jiefas ambulant (Right and Wrong, they go
about). Carmina Burana, p. 2 ; Hilka-Schumann, 19.
ii,
P. 192. Die Christi Truth

Veritas
(O of Christ). Carmina
Burana) xciii, p. 51. About a third of the Benedict-
beuern MS. is serious, some of it devout, but for the
most part satirical. The satire of the Vagantts, most
of them scholars disappointed of preferment, or
"
spoiled priests," was one of the earliest corrosives of
the mediaeval church. This, however, is ascribed to
Philippe de GrAve,
P. 196. Veritas veritatum. Carm. Bur. iii, p. 3; Hilka-
Schumann, 21.
P. 198. Omne genus demoniorum (Every one of demon race).
Carm. Bur. xxx, p. 35; Hilka-Schumann, 55.
away with study). Carm.
P. 202. Obmittamus stadia (Let's
Bur. 48, p. 137.
P. 206. Terra iam pandit gremium (The earth lies open-
breasted). Carm. Bur. 103, p. 181.

P. 210. Cedit, hyemSy tua durities (Now, winter, yieldeth all
thy dreariness). Carm. Bur. 98, p. 177.

333
P. 2 i 2. lamiam rident prata (Now the fields are laughing).
Cora. Bur. 107, p. 184.
P. 214. Letabundus rediit (Joyously return again). Carm.
Bur. 47, p. 136. Text in Manitius, Vagantenlieder, p. 2.
P. 218. Ab estatis foribus (At the gates of summer). Carm.
Bur. cii, p. 91.
P. 220. Estas non apparuit (Never ancient summer). Carm.
Bur. 115, p. 190.
P. 222. Tempus est iocundum (Now's the time for pleasure).
Carm. Bur. 140, p. 211. Text in Manitius, op. cit. t
p. 6.
P. 228. Volo virum viuere viriliter (I would have a man live
in manly fashion). Carm. Bur. 139, p. 210.
P. 232. Salve ver optatum (O Spring, the long desired).
Carm. Bur. 118, p. 193.
P. 234. Ecce, chorus virginum (Here be maids dancing).
Carm. Bur. 34, p. 118.
P. 238. Musa verdt carmine (Gay comes the singer). Carm.
Bur. 1
08, p. 185.
P. 242. Clausus Chronos (Time's shut up). Carm. Bur. 46,
p. The popular confusion of Chronos and
135.
Cronos, Time and Saturn, is noted by Paulinus of
Nola, Carm. xxxii, 191. The Esto Dione of the last line
is Sir Frederick Pollock's emendation of Es et Dione,
which was in turn an emendation of Schmeller's
Et quibus est Venus,
Est et Dione.
P. 246. Nobilis, mei miserere precor (Noblest, I pray thee).

Carm. Bur. 166, p. 228.
P. 250. Prata iam rident omnia (O sweet are flowers to
gather). Carm. Bur. 165, p. 228.
P. 252. Suscipe Flosjlorem (Take thou this rose, Rose). O
Carm. Bur. 147, p. 217.
P. 254. comes amoris dolor (O Sorrow, that art still Love's
334
company). Carm. Bur. 162, p. 225. Also in Wilhclm

Meyer, Fragmenta Burana, from another manuscript,
with additional stanzas, and variants not always for
the better; the conventional urit amor, for instance,
instead of dolor urget, exitium for exilium.
P. 256. Anni novi rediit novitas (New Year has brought
renewing). Carm. Bur. 51, p. 145. Is the Francie
regina Eleanor of Aquitaine, before the divorce from
Louis VII made her Queen of England?
P. 258. Dira vi amoris teror (By the dread force of love).
Carm. Bur. 158, p. 223.
P. 262. Dum estas inchoatur (While summer on is stealing).
Carm. Bur. 122, p. 196.
P. 264. Dum Diane vitrea (When Diana lighteth). Carm.
Bur. 37, p. 124. Text in Manitius, Vagantenlitder, p. 22.
P. 268. Sic mea fata canendo solor (So by my singing am I
comforted). Carm. Bur. 167, p. 229.

P. 272. Estas in exilium (Summer to a strange land). Carm.
Bur. 42, p. 131.
DE RAMIS CADUNT FOLIA P. 274

C. 1200
THIS is one of the rare though almost invariably beautiful

love-songs written in winter, not in spring. It is from a
thirteenth-century manuscript (B.N. Lat. 3719) which also
holds the almost Elizabethan melody of Sic mea fata canendo
solor ("So by mysinging am
I comforted "). The transla-
tion of the last stanza is perhaps insufferably free : and yet
it is not, I think, very far from the meaning of the original
"
conceit; Greek fire is extinguished by bitter wine (i.e.
vinegar), but this of mine (hie ignis of stanza 4) is not
335
MEDIEVAL LATIN ITRICS
extinguished by the poorest: nay rather, it is fed on fuel
most rich." Or, in other and more famous words,
" O Love! they wrong thee much
That say thy sweet is bitter,
When thy rich fruit is such
As nothing can be sweeter."
It is possible that miserrimo refers not to wine, but to
mihi understood yet this is to deface the triumph of the
:
poem.
Text in Du M&il, Potsies populaires latints du moyen dge
(1847), P- 235-
IPSA VIVERE MIHI REDDIDIT P. 278

C. 1200
THE Arundel MS. 384 from which this poem is taken is
one of the four great collections of mediaeval lyric. It is
written in English cursive script of the second half of the

fourteenth century, and falls into three sections, love-lyric,
praise of Christ and his Mother, and satires against the
higher clergy. age of Latin lyric,

It belongs to the great
between 1150 and 1250, and the intricacy of rhyme and
metre beguiles but defies the translator. Thomas Wright
(of inaccurate and blessed memory) first published them,
and hoped that he might claim them for England. One,
the second to last, is in praise of a great English pontifex,"
"
gay in speech, and learned in living, and subtly wise in

rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, to God
the things that are God's. Meyer suggests an ecclesiastic
who was also a Chancellor : and one is tempted to give the
poem to some anonymous lover of Thomas Becket, in the
336
days before Caesar and he were at odds. Five poems from
this anthology appear also in the Carmina Burana.
Text in W. Meyer, Die Arundel Sammlung MiUellateinischer
Lieder (Abhandlung. d. Kgl. Akad. zu G6ttingen:
philosoph.-hist. Klasse 1909), p. 25.
337
INDEX OF AUTHORS AND MSS.
PAOIS
Abelaiti, Peter 169-9,897-8
Alcuin 78-95,804-6
Aacilbert 109-5,808-9
Arehpoet 170-83,898-80
Ausonius 96-88,989-94
Boethius 48-57,996-7
Oilman the Irishman 74-7,808-4

Cotamba, St 68-9, 800-9
Fortunatus, Venantius 68-67,997-9

Pndttfis 96-9,806
Hrabanus Maurus 106-9, 809-11
Matoesbury (A Scholar of) 70-8,809-4

MS. Arundel 978-9, 886-7
MS. of Beauvais (Itidori) 99-8, 986-7
MS. of Benedtetbeuem (Carmina Burana) 184-978,880-5
MS. of Canterbury (Th* Cambndc* S<mgt) . . 149-8, 144-7, 148-55, 156-7, 891-4
MS. of St. Martial of Limoges 140-1, 144-7, 891, 898
MS. of Monte Castino 100-1,806-8
MS. of St. Remy at Rheims 90-1, 986
MS. SataMianus 94-5,988
MS. of Salxbuxg 144-7, 898
MS. thirteenth century (B.N. Lat. 8719) 974-7, 885-6
MS. tenth century, Vatican Mtta) 138-9,890-1
MS. of Verona (Awbcavit Abb**) 196-9,816-7
MS. of Verona \v4*ti**t tih*) 149-8,391-8
Paolinu* of Nola 84-41,989-94
Petronlot Arbiter 6-31,884-6
Prodentius 49-7, 194-1
Radbod 180-ft, 817-8
SeduUns Soottut 118-95,814-5

Sifebert of Gembkrax 158-61.895-7
VulfarJw, Eufeniui 186-7,818-90
Walafrid Strabo 110-17,811-18
33B
INDEX TO FIRST LINES (ENGLISH)
PAGE
A very paltry gift,of BO account 115
Ah God, ah God, that night when we two clung 91
AcroM the hills and in the valley's shade 101
Alone to Mcrifice Thou goest. Lord 167
Ancelkhovt 141
At the gates of tumxner 319
By day mine eyes, by night my soul desires thee 88

By the dread force ol love am I thus worn 859
was
Cexfcerns at Hell's gate still M
Come, sweetheart, come 14ft
Dancing girl of Syria 8

Dav of the Kin* most righteous 69
DftUght of tast is gross and brief 15
Down from the branches fall the leaves 175
Dreams, dreams that mock us 19
Every one of demon race 199
From the high mountains 88
Gay conies the singer 889
Here be r"*-]H^ff dancing

Here halt. I pray you
... . . . . 986
95
Heriger, Bishop of ICainc 149
Herself hath given back my life 879
How mighty are the Sabbaths 16$
Hunger and thirst, O Christ 181
Hyperion's dear star is not yet risen 189
I reed or write. I teach 118

I take to winds flower-bringing 188
I, through all chances that are given to mortals 87
I tried to make a garland 161
I would have a man live in manly fashion 189
If the high counsels of the Lord of Thunder 55
If 'twere the time of lilies 59
Joyously return again 815
Laid on my bed in sflence of the night 11

Last night did Christ the Sun rise from toe dark 119
Let's away with study 808
Look oo thy God 41
Love, lot us live as we have lived 18
Lovely Venn*, what's to do? 8f
Low in thy grave with thee 169
Michael, Archangel 91
Nealce, be that night for ever dear 18

Nectar and wme and food and scholar's wit 66
339
Never ancient summer
New Year has brought renewing
......
. .
. ... PACE
SSI
867
No work of men's hands but the weary yean 107
Noblest, I pray thee 947
Not that they begg*d be
Now'i the time
Now the
for pleasure
fields are
in
laughing
...
mind
...
. . 86
S38
SIS
Now, Winter, yieldeth all thy dreariness . Sll
O cuckoo that sang to us . 79
O lovely restless eyes ....

O little house, O dear and sweet my dwelling 97
S8
O shore more dear to thm life

TTV* . . 9
O sorrowful and ancient days

O Spring, the long desired
...
O Sorrow, that art still Love's company
...
. 365
187
S88
O strong of heart, go where the road
O Truth of Christ
Oboe there waa an Abbot
............
O sweet are flowers to gather
.........
of Angers
. 67
S61
198
1S7
.........
Right and Wrong they go about
........... 189
Seething over inwardly

Set free Thy people ...........
.........
.........
Sister art to PhoBbus, Lady Moon?
171
186
17
.........
Sister, my Muse, weep thou for me
.........
Small house and quiet roof tree
.......
So by my singing am I comforted
Ill
7
869
Softly the west wind blows ..........

So, since your heart is set on those sweet fields
.......
.........
Spring, and the sharpness of the golden dawn
76
167
87
.........
Spring wakens the birds' voices
..........
Storm and destruction shattering
Summer to a strange land
89
71
878
.........
..........
Take him, earth, for cherishing
Take thou this rose. O Rose
..........
46
868
The earth lies open-breasted
.........
..........
The sadness of the wood is bright
807
148
The standing corn is green
The toflofoV it ebbing
Then live, my strength
..........
...........
.......
181
48
109
They wander in deep woods ..........

Therefore come they, the crowding maidens
.........
..........
m the pact of things
169
81
49
This discord
Time's shut up and Spring
..........
..........
Time that is fallen is flying
848
67
Truth of all troth ............

To you, consummate drinkers
.......
186
197
When Diana lignteth ...........

What colour are they now, thy quiet waters?
.........
..........
When the dawn at early morning
1*1
866
108
When the moon's splendour
While summer on is stealing..........
.......
Whoever stole you from that bush of broom
117
868
89
You ........
.........
at God's altar stand, His minister
of face
68
81
340
INDEX TO FIRST LINES (LATIN)
PACK
Ab estatis foribus SIS
Aesuries te, Christe deus ISO
Altaris domini pollens 6S
Andecavis abas esse dicitur
Anni novi rediit novitas
Aurora cum primo mane
Aut lego vel scribo
.......... 1*6
256
103
133
Cedit, hyems, tua durities 210

Cerne dcum nostro velatum
Clausus Cbronos et serato
Conatus roseas Thebeis feme coronas
Conveniunt subito cuncti de montibus
..........
altis .
40
349
160
83
Copasurisca 3
Cum splendor lunae fulgescat 116
De ramis cadunt folia

Die Christ! veritas
Die quid agis. fonnosa Venus
Dira vi amoro teror
Dum Diane vitrea
..........
........... .103
374
34
368
364
Dum estas inchoatur 363
Dum subito properas duloes invisere terras 74
Bcce, chorus virginum 2S4

Booe, noctxirno tempore
Errantes silva in magna

Betas in exilium
...
Ego et per omne quod datum mortalibus ........ 70
86
BO
S78
Estas nonapparuit. . JfO
Estuans intrinsecus 170
Fat et Nefas ambulant 188

Floriferas auras et frondea tempora capto 181
Fluxit labor diei 43
Foeda est in coitu et brevis voluptas 14
Haec munuscula vilia parvi

tibi servitii 114
Heriger, urbis Maguntiensis
Heu, cuculus nobis fuerat cantare suetus
Hie, rogo, pauxillum veniens subsiste, viator
Hinc celer egrediens facili, mea carta, volatu
........ 146
78
94
100
Hinc virginalis sancta frequentia 158
lam. dulcU arnica, venito 144

lamiam rident prata SIS
Ipsa vivere mini reddidit 376
lie mine fortes 66
Lecto compotitus vix prima silentia noctis 10

Letabundus rediit 314
Levis exsurgit Zephynis 156
Ubera plebem Ubi servientem .134
MUM, nostrum, plange, soror, dolorem 110
MUM venit carmine 388
341
PAGE
Nectar vina dims vestis 64
NobiUs,mei 946
Non mope* anlmi 14
Nullum opt* exsuiftt quod non annosa vetustas 106
Nunc suscipe. tMxs>t fovendum
... 190
Nuncviridanisegetes
.......
.....
O blandos ocolos ct mouietos
!.'!!.'!
.
11
.........
.
O comes amoris, dolor 164
........
O tttus vita mini dufotas. o mare
......... 6
O recta* potent
O tr&tia seola priora
............
OmetoeUft.mihihftbitetiodulds.AmftU
O quanta quli stint ilia sabbata
...........
...........
96
161
60
1M
Obmittamu* stadia
Omoe genus dcmonionim .......... SOS
198
.......
.........
Plebt angelica
Potatores exqukiy
'
............
Panrula tacuro tecttur xnihi culmine sedes
Pboebd ciaro nonoum orto iubare
...........
...........
6
118
140
164
Prata lam rideat omnia
.........
Pulchia comis annisque 4fi^rt
60
90
r
_
kwenam discon
........
.........
9 to dextra mini rapuit, lutdnia
...........
foedera rerum
6
litnoxfultill*
...........
i color ilia vadit
...........
46
SO
10
Rflfisnfimiraotistimi
Sahre, w
optatum
SiPboebisorores
............
............
...........
68
189
Sivfrceliiiuratonanti.
Sic ma* fata caoe&do solor
SttBOsmadiunobisdelecte
..........
..........
........
16
M
966
19
Somnia, quae mentet ludunt

Stapet tergwninui novo
..........
Solus ad victimam prooedis, Domine
...........
...........
166
16
61
Summi ngU archanle
........
...........
Smrttztt Onrfctu* *oTvenu vwpere noctis
Susoipt Flo* florom
60
116
ffl
........
...........
Te vifiians oculb animo te nocte requiro 99
Tampora lapaa volant
.......
...........
Tempera titolitoxnihl Candida llliafermit
66
M
Temptu ett iocundxim
Terra iam pandit fmnium
Uzor vivaoiui nt
..........
vizixnus>...,
fM
906
11
Vel ooalotfus putter

Ver avttni voces aperit
...........
...........
.......
166
M
Verttas wttatum ........
Ver erat et biaodo mordentla
....
frifora seosu
......... H
196
VetUoat iihw tenera merorcm
.......
..........
Vl^, meae rires kstarutnque anchora rerum
Vote virum vivero vfailtter
149
101
998
342
Printed in Great Britain by
RICHARD CLAY AND COMPANY, LTD.
BUNG AY
Suffolk

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36

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON LIBRARIE

Estate of Solomon Katz

THE WANDERING SCHOLARS

RICHAKD CLAY AND COMPANY, LTD.

Splendida dum rutilat roseis Aurora quadrigis

the lovers cry to her by the lovelier name

Yet in anthologies omission is a worse thing than inclu-

companions. He is a kind of Old Mortality, his business,

warning and good counsel, and such blunders as still

publishea since then are Mr. Stephen Gaselee's Oxford Book

COPA Surisca caput Graeca rcdimita mitclla,

Very subtle in swaying those quivering flanks of hers

There's even garlands for you, violet wreaths and saffron,

Achelois brings them in green willow baskets

parce illi, Vestae delicium est asinus.

seu vis crystalli ferre novos calices.

per morsum tenerae decerpens ora puellae.

quid cineri ingrato servas bene olentia scrta?

Did not a goddess love a little donkey ?

It's very hot.

What thanks will cold ashes give for the sweetness of

praeterea sive alitibus contexere fraudem

hie precor inveniat consumptaquc tempora poscat.

o formosa dies ! hoc quondam rure solebam

haec statio est tacitis fida cupidinibus.

Most happy I that unto my own lands

Here it was long ago I used to swim

Here is the harbour for a stilled desire.

Yea, I have lived : never shall Fate unkind

solus ego ex cunctis paveo somnumque torumque,

I, I alone of all men dare not sleep,

torus et lecti genius secretaque iampas,

quis tenera in nostrum vcneris arbitrium,

fac cite quod coeptum est, non cito desinere.

" marmore Sicanio struxi

atque cxundantcs profuso sanguine campos.

et cards in somnis leporis vestigia lustrat.

Yields in her sleep, and in his sleep the hound

MS. OF ST. RfiMY AT RHEIMS

MS. OF ST. RfiMY AT RHEIMS

MS. OFj BEAUVAIS

illic et Venus et leves Amores

Between them dwells Delight.

DIG formosa Venus, si nescis amanti

ferre vicera? omne decus, durn deperit aetas,

marcent rorcm rosa

lilia vcrnum candore

haec metuas et amanti

redde vicem, amatur.

VER crat ct blando mordentia frigora sensu

vidi Paestano gaudere rosaria cultu,

SPRING, and the sharpness of the golden dawn.

Think you, did Dawn steal colour from the roses,

A moment dies : this bud that was new born

mirabar celerem fugitiva aetate rapinam

ostentata oculis ilico dona rapis.

Scattering the close seeds of her golden heart.

So many lovely things, so rare, so young,