Skip to main content

Full text of "Mediaeval Latin Lyrics"

See other formats


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 deepest source is in the pagan 
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 cry out for that remembrance that 
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 
Epitaph, still " lieth the Lord Abbot Alcuin of blessed memory, 
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 
still commit upon the older language, it is not for lack of 
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 
bibliography in Mr. F. J. E, Raby's History of Christian 
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 Justice of a complaint brought by a discriminating critic 
against the principle of selection in this anthology : that it 
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 

COP A 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, 

rustica pastoris fistula more sonat. 
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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 is it your mind to hang a rose wreath upon your 

tombstone? 
Set down the wine and the dice, and perish who thinks of 

to-morrow ! 
Here's Death twitching my ear, " Live," says he, " for 

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 si manet exitus idem, 
hie precor inveniat consumptaquc tempora poscat. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 terras ire subinde meas ! 
o formosa dies ! hoc quondam rure solebam 

Naiadas alterna sollicitare xnanul 
hie fontis lacus est, illic sinus cgerit algas : 

haec statio est tacitis fida cupidinibus. 
pervixi : neque enim fortuna malignior unquam 

cripiet nobis quod prior hora dedit. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



PETRONIUS ARBITER 

LECTO compositus vix prima silcntia noctis 

carpebam et somno lumina victa dabam, 
cum me saevus Amor prensat sursumquc capillis 

cxcitat ct laccrum pcrvigilare iubct. 
" Tu famulus meus," inquit, " amcs cum mille puellas, 

solus, io, solus, dure, iacerc 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, 

et volucrum cantus fidaque turba canum : 
solus ego ex cunctis paveo somnumque torumque, 

et sequor imperium, magne Gupido, tuum. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



PETRONIUS ARBITER 

LAID on my bed in silence of the night, 

I scarce had given my weary eyes to sleep, 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



PETRONIUS ARBITER 

Sir nox ilia diu nobis dilecta, Nealce, 

quae te prima mco pectore coxnposuit ; 
sit torus et lecti genius secretaque iampas, 

quis tenera in nostrum vcneris arbitrium, 
ergo age duremus, quaxnvis adoleverit aetas, 

utamurque annis quos mora parva terct. 
fas et iura sinunt veteres extendere amores ; 

fac cite quod coeptum est, non cito desinere. 



12 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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. 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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, 
scilicet ut fratri quae peto verba feras : 

" 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 cum prostrata 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 mollis torus, haesimus calentcs 
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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



PETRONIUS ARBITER 

AH God, ah God, that night when we two clung 
So close, our hungry lips 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 quid agis, formosa Venus, si nescis amanti 
ferre vicera? pent omne decus, durn deperit aetas, 
marcent post rorcm violac, rosa perdit odorem, 
lilia post vcrnum posito candore liquewunt 
haec metuas exempla precor, et semper amanti 
redde vicem, quia semper amat, qui semper amatur. 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 frost stiff on the bent grasses, 
Sitting in fat globes on the cabbage leaves, 
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 ; 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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, 
All pallid now and bare and desolate. 
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 is she, that 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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 still your lad, and you my little lass. 
Let me be 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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, 
si modo non vincant vacuis praesentia rebus, 
quaeque videt spernat, quae non vidct ut mereatur 
secreta ignitus penetrans caelestia sensus. 
namque caduca patent nostris, acterna negantur 
visibus, et nunc 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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. 

Still must she keep her senses and affections, 

Hold them as dear as life itself to be. 
Could she choose death, then might she choose forgetting: 

Living, remembering, to eternity. 



37 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 nisi vere 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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



PAULINUS OF NOLA 

For St. Felix 9 Day 

SPRING wakens the birds' voices, but for me 
My Saint's day is my spring, and in its light 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



PAULINUS OF NOLA 

Verbum ends 

CERNE deum nostro velatum corporc Christum, 

qui fragilis carnc est, 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. 



MEDIMVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



PRUDENTIUS 

Before Sleep 

THE toil of day is ebbing, 
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 still Lethean waters 

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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



PRUDENTIUS 

Hymnus circa Exseyuias Dtfuncti 

NUNC suscipe, terra, fovcndum, 
grcmioquc hunc concipc molli. 

hominis tibi membra sequestra, 
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. 

veniant modo 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 fulfil the hope of men, 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 soul, sunken in desire, 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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. 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 
victus lumina flexerit, 
quidquid praecipuum trahit 
perdit, dum videt inferos. 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 is not 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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



BOETHIUS 

Si vis celsi iura tonantis 
pur a 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



BOETHIUS 

ITE nunc fortes ubi celsa magni 
ducit exempli via. ctir inertes 
terga nudatis? superata tellus 
sidera donat. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



BOETHIUS 

O STRONG of heart, go where the road 
Of ancient honour climbs. 
Bow not your craven shoulders. 
Earth conquered gives the stars. 



57 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS 

Item ad eandem proflaribus transmissis 

O REOINA potens, aururn cui et purpura vile cst, 

floribus ex parvis te veneratur amans. 
ct si non res est, color est tamen ipsc per herbas : 

purpura per violas, aurea forma crocus, 
dives amore dei vitasti pracmia mundi : 

illas contemnens has retinebis opes, 
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, 

isti vos cupiunt iam reviderc foris. 
ct licet egregio yidcantur odore placere, 

plus ornant proprias te redeunte comas. 



60 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS 

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 : 

divisis tcrris alligat unus amor, 
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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS 

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 is the 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 beneath an 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 



VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS 

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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS 

To Gogo t that he can eai no mort 

NECTAR and wine and food and scholar's wit, 

Such is the fashion, Gogo, of thy house. 
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 

VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS 

Ad lovinum inlustrem ac patricium ft rectorem provincial 

TEMPORA lapsa volant, fugitivis fallimur horis . . . 
sic quoque dissimiles ad fincm tendimus omnes, 

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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



VENANTIUS FORTUNATUS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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, 
in quo cessabit mulierum 
amor et desiderium, 
hominumquc contentio 
mundi huius et cupido. 



68 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 
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. 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 
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 patriae quoniam te cura rcmordet 
omnipotens genitor nostrac spes unica vitae 
qui maris horrisonos fluctus ventosque gubernat 
del tibi none tutas crispantis gurgitis undas, 
ipse tuae liquidis rector sit navis in undis, 
aequorc nubiferi devectum flatibus aim 
reddat ad opiate scottorum littora terrae, 
tune valeas fame felix multosque per annos 
vivas aegregiae capiens pracconia vitae, 
hie ego praesentis nunc gaudia temporis opto, 
ut tibi perpetuae contingant gaudia vitae, 



MEDIMVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 vivat, redeat, nidosque recurrat ad almos, 

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, cuculus modo rumpc soporem, 

te cupit, en, senior atque Menalca pater, 
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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 
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 come again, 

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 here again, wake from thy sleeping, 

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, 

ille reccssit ovans, flens redit ille, puto. 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 senior que Palemon : 
omnes hi cuculo laudes cantare par ab 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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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. I would that he were here, 

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. I would 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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

Winter. Let him not come, 

Cuckoo! 

For toil comes with him and he wakens wars, 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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! 
tu iam dulcis amor, cunctis gratissimus hospes. 
omnia te expectant, pelagus tcllusque polusque. 
salve, dulce decus, cuculus per saecula salve! " 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

Then old PaUmon spake from kis high seat, 

And Daphnis, and the crowd of faithful 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 ! 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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. 
noctibus in furvis nusquam cessavit ab odis, 

vox vencranda sacris, o decus atque decor, 
quid mirum, cherubim, seraphim si voce tonantem 

perpctua laudcnt, dum tua sic potuit? 



MEDIMVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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." 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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, 

nobis ferendo opcm domini 

Icvamcn atque indulgentiae. 

Tu nostros, Gabrihcl, 

hostes prostcrne, 

tu, Raphael, aegris 

afier medclam, 

morbos absterge, noxas minue, 

nosque fac interessc gaudiis 

bcatomm. 

Has tibi symphonias plectrat sophus, induperator. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 



MED1MVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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. 

et quod nunc ego sum, tuque futurus eris. 
delicias mundi casso sectabar amore, 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 I am now, so shall thou be. 
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 all pray for him and say, " May the Lord give him 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

nil manct 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. 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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, 
victor ille 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 fortis Hlotharius 
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, 
in qua 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 



MEDIMVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATW LTRICS 
WALAFRID STRABO 

Written from Fulda to his old master at Reichenau 

SISTER, my Muse, weep thou for me I pray. 
Wretched am 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 and I am poorly happed, 
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. 

I think 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, 
es tamen 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 me not die, O 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. 



MEDIMVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 this poor verse that love and faith inscribe. 

Love, art thou true ? and fast love's chain about thee ? 

Then for all time, O love, God give thee joy ! 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 



MEDIMVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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, 
visitet plebcm tua sancta dextra, 
nos tuo vultu videas serenus, 
ne pereamus. 



124 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 are Thy servants, Thou the Good Shepherd, 
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 all saints and king of all kingships, 
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 Liber o. 

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 
Eia laudes dicamus Liber o. 

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 Liber o. 

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 

Eia laudes dicamus Libero. 



126 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 ! 
Glory be to Bacchus ! 

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. 

Ho and ho and ho and ho I 

Glory b* to Bacchus ! 



1*1 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 Liber o. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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. 
Ho and ho and ho and ho I 
Glory be to Bacchus ! 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



RADBOD 

" ANNO ab incarnatione domini DGCGC apparuit in caelo 
mirabile signum. stelle enim vise sunt undique tamcn ex 
alto in orizontis ima profluere, circa poli cardinem 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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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* 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

Colder the sun, and winter, 

Bitter with snow at hand. 
Out-driven or out-flying, 

I leave my fatherland. 

Sweet nests and kindly threshold, 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIJf LTRICS 



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. 

Ualba part umet mar atra sol 
Pay pasa bigil mira clar tenebras. 

Ab Arcturo disgregatur aquilo 

poli sues condunt astra radios, 

orient! tenditur sep ten trio. 

Ualba part umet mar atra sol 
Poy pasa bigil mira clar tenebras. 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 ! " 

Dawn over the dark sea brings on the sun ; 

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. 

Dawn over the dark sea brings on the sun ; 

She leans across the hilltop : see, the light ! 



139 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 
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 that have 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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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* 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 is the very type of chastity, 
Save she who bore the burden that was Christ 
In her inviolate womb. 



143 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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, 
ilia mclos cum lira pangit; 
Portantque xninistri pateras 
pigmentatis poculis plenas. 



144 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



Non me iuvat tantum convivium 
quantum post dulce colloquium, 
Ncc rerum tantarum ubertas 
ut dilecta familiaritas. 

Iain nunc veni, soror electa 
et pre 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* 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 live not 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



HERIGER 

HERIGER, urbis 
Maguntiensis 
antistes, qucndam 
vidit prophetam 
qui ad infernum 
se dixit rap turn. 

Inde cum multas 
rcferret causas, 
subiunxit totum 
esse infernum 
accinctum dcnsis 
undique silvis. 

Hcrigcr illi 
ridens respondit ; 
** meum subulcum 
illuc ad pastum 
volo cum macris 
mittcre porcis." 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 
Answer: " I 
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 
Christus lohanncm 
ponens pincemam, 
quoniarn vinuxxi 
non bibit unquam. 



150 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

The liar said : 
" I was to 
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 
Said, c * 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." 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

" 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]. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIJf LTRICS 



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 it with 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



SIGEBERT OF GEMBLOUX 

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 



MEDIMVAL LATIN LTRICS 

SIGEBERT OF GEMBLOUX 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



SIGEBERT OF GEMBLOUX 

The Martyrdom of the Theban Legion 

I TRIED to make a garland for the saints. . . . 
No lily for me, violet or rose, 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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, 

summa iucunditas : 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 is the city 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIJf LTRICS 

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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 ista flcbilis praesensquc triduum 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 : 
laesis pulsu 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 is evident 
That I am a fool, since I 

Am a 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIJf LYRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 Pa via 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 



MEDIMVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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. 
II lam 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 if the body's cold, 

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 on this 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 



MEDIMVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 vix tandem 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

*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 and think, 

Shun the tavern's portal, 
Write, and never having lived, 

Die to be immortal. 



179 



MEDIAEVAL LATIJf LTRICS 



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 
dolia cauponum y 
tale vinum generat 
copiam sermonum. . . , 



i So 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 : 

*Tis a better chorus 
When the landlord hath a good 

Vintage set before us. 



181 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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. 



MEDIMVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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. 

If any 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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



3 

Dare, non ut convcnit, 
non cst a virtute, 
bonuin est sccundum quid, 
sed non absolute; 
dignc dare poteris 
ct mcreri tute 
famarn muneris 
si me prius noveris 
intus et in cute 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 full with each amount, 
Hesitate no more, but give 

What you have to me. 



191 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

Die Christ! Veritas, 
die car a raritas, 
die rara Car it 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, 
vel in domo Romulea 
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* 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 
"surge, tolle grabatum! " 



196 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 
MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 

By the will of God, 
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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDIGTBEUERN 

OBMITTAMUS studia, 
dulce est desipere, 
et carpamus dulcia 
iuventutis tenere, 
res est apta senectuti 
seriis intendere. 

Velox etas preterit 

studio detent a 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDIGTBEUERN 

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 ! 

'Tis our 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, 
And in study wasting 

Youth that would be gay ! 



203 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 invent a. 

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 detent a, 

lascivire suggerit 

tenera iuventa. 



204 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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, 
And in study wasting 

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, 
And in study wasting 

Touth that would be gay ! 



205 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 life come from the dead, 

The cold that wrought for evil 
Is routed now and fled. 



207 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIJf LYRICS 

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 



MEDIMVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDIGTBEUERN 

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 



MS. OF BENEDIGTBEUERN 

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 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDIGTBEUERN 

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, 
Banish we all sadness, 

We who tender are, 
And may lovely faces and soft speeches, 

Love and Hope now bring us into gladness ! 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDIGTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDIGTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 
voti compos 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

AT the gates of Summer, 

Love standeth us to greet, 
The earth, to do him honour, 

Burgeons beneath his feet. 
The flowers that 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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. 

Aves nunc in silva canunt . . . 

Amor querit iuvenes 

ut ludant cum virginibus, 

Venus despicit senes, 

qui inpleti sunt doloribus. 
Aves nunc in silva canunt . . . 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 



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 sire of gods and men, 

Vulcan hath taken in his net 
Beauty and War again. 

Down in the greenwood sing the birds. 

With glory of the goddess 
Are the old legends full, 

Of Daphne and Apollo, 
Europa and the Bull. 

Down in the greenwood sing the birds. 

It is for youth, youth only, 
To love, be loved again. 

For beauty mocks at old men, 
The old are full of pain. 

Down in the greenwood sing the birds. 



221 



MEDIAEVAL LATIJf LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

TBMPUS est iocundum, 
o virgines, 
modo congaudete 
vos iuvcncs 

O. o. totus floreO) 
iam amore virginali 
totus ardeoy 
nouns novus amor 
est y quo pereo. 

Gantat philomcna 
sic dulciter, 
et modulans auditor ; 
intus calco 

O. o. totus Jhreo . . . 



222 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

New love 

Now's the time for pleasure, 

Lads and lasses, 
Take your joy together 

Ere it passes. 
With the love of a maid 



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, 
With the love of a maid 

Aflower, 
With the love of a maid 

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. 
With the love of a maid 

Aflower, 
With the love of a maid 

Afire, 
New love, new love, 

Dying of desire. 

All the sweet of life, 

Xhy consenting, 
All the bitterness, 

Thy repenting. 
With the love of a maid 

Aflower, 
With the love of a maid 

Afire, 
New love, new love, 

Dying of desire. 

Thy virginity 

Mocks my wooing, 
Thy simplicity 

Is my undoing. 
With the love of a maid 

A/lower, 
With the love of a maid 

Afire, 
New love, new love, 

Dying of desire. 



3*5 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



O nightingale, be still 

For an hour, 
Till the heart sings, 
With the love of a maid 

Aflower, 
With the love of a maid 

Afire, 
New love, new love y 

Dying of desire. 

Patient I have been, 

Winter long, 
Now comes wanton spring 

With a song. 
With the love of a maid 

Aflower, 
With the love of a maid 

Afire, 
New love, new love, 

Dying of desire. 

Come, mistress mine, 

Joy with thee, 
Come, fairest, come, 

Love, to me. 
With the love of a maid 

Aflower, 
With the love of a maid 

Afire, 
New love, new love, 

Dying of desire. 



2,2,7 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

I WOULD have a man live in manly fashion. 

Yea, I shall love, but given an equal passion : 

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 fain would please me, 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIJf LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDIGTBEUERN 

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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MS. OF BENEDIGTBEUERN 

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. . . 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

Late pandit tilia 
frondcs, ramos, folia, 
thymus cst sub ea, 
viridi cum gramine, 
in quo fit chorea. 

Patet et in gramine 
iocundo rivus murmur e. 
locus est festivus, 
ventus cum tempcrie 
susurrat tempestivus. 



340 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIMVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDIGTBEUERN 

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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDIGTBEUERN 

NOBILIS, mei 
miserere precor, 
tua facies 

ensis est quo necor, 
nam medullitus 
amat meum te cor, 
subveni ! 
Amor irnprobus 
omnia super at, 
subveni ! 

Come sperulas 
tue eliciunt 
cordi sedulas, 
flammas adjiciunt, 
hebet animus, 
vires deficiunt : 
subveni ! 
Amor irnprobus 
omnia super at, 
subveni ! 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDIGTBEUERN 

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, 
Love the all-conquering, 
Come to mine aid ! 



24? 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

Odor roseus 
spiral a labiis; 
speciosior 
pre cunctis filiis, 
melle dulcior, 
pulchrior liliis, 
subveni ! 
Amor improbus 
omnia super at, 
subveni ! 

Decor prevalet 
candori etheris ; 
ad pretorium 
prescntor Vcncris ; 
eccc pereo, 
si non subveneris ; 
subveni ! 
Amor improbus 
omnia super at, 
subveni 1 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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, 

Love the all-conquering, 

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 ', 

Love the all-conquering, 

Come to mine aid ! 



249 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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. 
si velles hoc cognoscere, 
bcne posses, ut sentio. 
o tu virgo pulcherrima, 
si non audis me miser urn, 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

MS. OF BENEDIGTBEUERN 

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 is winter 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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

STJSCIPE Flos florem, 

quia flos designat aznorezn. 
illo de flore 

nimio sum captus amore. 
hunc florem, Flora 

dulcissima, semper odora, 
nam velut aurora 

fiet tua forma decora, 
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 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 

Is not the whole, 
Who paints the flower 

Paints not its fragrant soul. 



253 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 singular is, 
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 ! 



MEDIAEVAL LATIJf LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 fairest that is in the hills. 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

MS. OF BENEDIGTBEUERN 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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. 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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$ 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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. 

si variarum 

odor herbarum 

spiraverit, 

si dederit 

thorum rosa, 

dulciter soporis alimonia 

post Veneris defessa commercia 

captatur 

dum lassis instillatur .... 



266 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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, 

And strength from me fast flying, 

And I 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 my lady would lie by me, 
And I kiss the mouth I love, 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

Innocent breasts, when I have looked upon them, 

Would that my hands were there, 
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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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, 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



MS. OF BENEDICTBEUERN 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIJf LTRICS 



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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 am burning ; in my heart 

There is a fire, 
A living flame in me, the maid 

Of my desire. 



275 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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. 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



ARUNDEL MS. 



IPSA vivere 
ccssit prospere, 
menti misere : 
quc dum temere 
se sub Venere, 
Venus cthcre 
leto siderc. 



mihi reddidit ! 

spe plus accidit 

totam tradidit 
risus edidit 



Dcsidcrio 
dum vix gaudio 
quod concipio 
dum Venerio 
me colloquio, 
dum, quern haurio, 
dato basio. 



nimis officit, 

pectus sufficit, 

Flora reficit 



favus allicit 



Sepe rcfero 
sinu tenero : 
addens numero. 
cunctis impero, 
si tetigero 
quern desidero, 
tactu libero. 



cursum liberum 
sic me superum 



felix iterum 



sinum tenerum 



278 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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, it is unlike anything else in Augustan 
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 the wine and the dice, and perish who thinks of 
to-morrow!) is quoted in the Carmina Burana, the profane 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 
his cloister, on the apple-room for instance, and on a friend 
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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 is not 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 
dab as. y 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 at all is due to the labour of Claude 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 
keeps his name " in pleasantness and blessing/ 9 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 
" the little lass " that he had thought to find her even in 
her old age. Writing thirty-six years after it, the house 
is still empty about him : but her children lived, and the 
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 
beyond anything he ever wrote in verse : " O 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 is never weary of recalling that in the consulship 
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 to Desiderius at Vicnne that the Blessed Gregory 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 this Spain ! 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 
off. " As a dream when one awake 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 
kiss f> ? 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 



MED1MVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 from without : then the crying of his own heart 
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 
heart, or wrote again above it, " But did not say that he 
would come," there is no showing. A few years saw him 
go down to his grave, a shock of corn fully ripe, full of 

29* 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 
acid footnote, " condemns the taste of his age." A good 
deal of it is sad stuff: the elegant trifles that weigh like 
lead on later generations. But his De Rosis Nascentibus t 
in its own 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 y that he scribbled a fragment, adapted from 
Shelley, to his friend Cowcll 

" in Time's fleeting river 
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 
Script. Eccles. Lat. 9 xxx., Vienna, 1894). Non inopes animi 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 
of the Pyrenees " as his own 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 his Peristephanon of grave remembrance. Augus- 
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 
ambassador," and " Beauty, paradise's flower." To 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 
circa Exsequias Defuncti, p. 56, 11. 125-end. For the auto- 
biographical references in his poems see the Prolegomena. 



295 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 Aristotle, would have kept his fame alight among 
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, 11. 29-58; Si vis celsi iura, iv. 6, 
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 

halts by a half-foot, and that the monosyllable saw should 
be replaced by some longer verb. Yet Orpheus is so heavy 

296 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 chanting Virgil 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 intolerable on an income reduced to ten million 
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 



MEDIMVAL LATIN LTRICS 

ST. COLUMBA P. 68 

521-597 

ST. COLUMBA was born at Gartan in Donegal on December 
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 light, in atonement for the great fight with Diar- 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 y Christe. 

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 
civitates munitas et super angulos excelsos. 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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, i. 66 ff., ii. pp. 23-27, Bernard and Atkinson 
(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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

alone left standing. That the writer was a scholar of 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIJf LTRICS 

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, 
because the line " The 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 
letters of 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 (Fredugis), 23. See also Alcuini Epistolae, 226, 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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, it was 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 efforts, he took enormous delight in the verse- 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 better for the spirit than the jangling of men." 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

human weakness and his self-distrust. His faith was 
absolute, self-condemning, and passionate: he saw the 
" sulphurous stagnant pools " of 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 is edited by Dummlcr in 
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 
Ermenrici ad 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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 



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 
it was 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 
less in 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) : 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 Roy ale de Belgique, 1882; Hellmann, 
Sedulius Scottus (Munich, 1906) ; Jarcho, Die Vorl&ufer des 
Golias, in Speculum, 1928, pp. 523 ff. 



315 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 



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 
and saints as commensales. Cyprian 9 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 by their less creditable peculiarities. 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 is found 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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 Irish wandering scholar once addressed a flattering 
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, 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 worse than death itself," and he 
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 (1866). Luitprand, Antapodosis, i. 
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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 text is from the facsimile in E. Monaci, Facsimili di 
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*), 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 is continental minuscule, with 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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. 13. in auris is Haupt's emendation for the Cambridge 
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 
for " Hugonc a Deo coronato," and now in Paris (B.N. 
Lat. 1 1 1 8) . This last is a troper, remarkable for the beauty 

3*3 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

of its notation and its rough drawings of various musical 
instruments. The last two verses, where the smouldering 
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 the innocence 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 the Cambridge MS. It is perhaps the hap- 
piest air from 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

dolorosa selva of gnarled and poisoned trees. There is 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 fields and of open air and 
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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

(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 
if the 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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 to immortality. Fortunately his 
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 figure first sidled up to the Chancellor during his 
mission to Rome, maH^g unflattering comments on the 
parsimony of Italian ecclesiastics, and indicating that it 
also was an exile in Italy, and had a bad cough and a rapid 

328 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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, in very 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 
is again 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 
first articulate 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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 
himself," says Otto, " for lust or for default" At 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 
House of the Potter, " Why hast thou made me thus? " 

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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIJf LYRICS 

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 jostle with songs from Hugh of Orleans, from the 
Archpoet, from Walther von dor Vogelweide, from Gautier 
dc Chatillon, possibly from Abelard himself: but most of 

331 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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 Bur ana (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 
it was a great favourite with Philip, Archbishop of 
Ravenna. 

P. 1 88. Fas et Jiefas ambulant (Right and Wrong, they go 
about). Carmina Burana, ii, p. 2 ; Hilka-Schumann, 19. 

P. 192. Die Christi Veritas (O Truth 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. 

P. 202. Obmittamus stadia (Let's away with study). Carm. 
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 



MEDIMVAL LATIN LTRICS 

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. 135. The popular confusion of Chronos and 

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, O Rose). 

Carm. Bur. 147, p. 217. 

P. 254. comes amoris dolor (O Sorrow, that art still Love's 

334 



MEDIAEVAL LATW LTRICS 

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 my singing 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. It belongs to the great age of Latin lyric, 
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 



MEDIAEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 

Cexfcerns at Hell's gate was 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 ... . . . . 986 

Here halt. I pray you 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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LTRICS 

PACE 

Never ancient summer ...... . ... SSI 

New Year has brought renewing . . 867 

No work of men's hands but the weary yean 107 

Noblest, I pray thee 947 

Not that they begg*d be in mind . . 86 

Now'i the time for pleasure ... S38 

Now the fields are laughing ... SIS 

Now, Winter, yieldeth all thy dreariness . Sll 

O cuckoo that sang to us . 79 

O little house, O dear and sweet my dwelling 97 

O lovely restless eyes .... S8 

O shore more dear to TTV* thm life . . 9 

O Sorrow, that art still Love's company . 365 

O sorrowful and ancient days ... 187 

O Spring, the long desired ... S88 

O strong of heart, go where the road . 67 

O sweet are flowers to gather S61 

O Truth of Christ ............ 198 

Oboe there waa an Abbot of Angers ......... 1S7 

Right and Wrong they go about ......... 189 

Seething over inwardly ........... 171 

Set free Thy people ........... 186 

Sister art to PhoBbus, Lady Moon? ......... 17 

Sister, my Muse, weep thou for me ......... Ill 

Small house and quiet roof tree ......... 7 

So by my singing am I comforted ......... 869 

So, since your heart is set on those sweet fields ....... 76 

Softly the west wind blows .......... 167 

Spring, and the sharpness of the golden dawn ....... 87 

Spring wakens the birds' voices ......... 89 

Storm and destruction shattering ......... 71 

Summer to a strange land .......... 878 

Take him, earth, for cherishing ......... 46 

Take thou this rose. O Rose .......... 868 

The earth lies open-breasted .......... 807 

The sadness of the wood is bright ......... 148 

The standing corn is green .......... 181 

The toflofoV it ebbing .......... 48 

Then live, my strength ........... 109 

Therefore come they, the crowding maidens ....... 169 

They wander in deep woods .......... 81 

This discord m the pact of things ......... 49 

Time's shut up and Spring .......... 848 

Time that is fallen is flying .......... 67 

To you, consummate drinkers .......... 186 

Truth of all troth ............ 197 

What colour are they now, thy quiet waters? ....... 1*1 

When Diana lignteth ........... 866 

When the dawn at early morning ......... 108 

When the moon's splendour .......... 117 

While summer on is stealing .......... 868 

Whoever stole you from that bush of broom ....... 89 

You at God's altar stand, His minister ........ 68 

of face ......... 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 1*6 

Anni novi rediit novitas 256 

Aurora cum primo mane .......... 103 

Aut lego vel scribo 133 

Cedit, hyems, tua durities 210 

Cerne dcum nostro velatum 40 

Clausus Cbronos et serato .......... 349 

Conatus roseas Thebeis feme coronas 160 

Conveniunt subito cuncti de montibus altis . 83 

Copasurisca 3 

Cum splendor lunae fulgescat 116 

De ramis cadunt folia 374 

Die Christ! veritas .103 

Die quid agis. fonnosa Venus .......... 34 

Dira vi amoro teror ........... 368 

Dum Diane vitrea 364 

Dum estas inchoatur 363 

Dum subito properas duloes invisere terras 74 

Bcce, chorus virginum 2S4 

Booe, noctxirno tempore 70 

Ego et per omne quod datum mortalibus ........ 86 

Errantes silva in magna ... BO 

Betas in exilium 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 tibi servitii munuscula vilia parvi 114 

Heriger, urbis Maguntiensis 146 

Heu, cuculus nobis fuerat cantare suetus ........ 78 

Hie, rogo, pauxillum veniens subsiste, viator 94 

Hinc celer egrediens facili, mea carta, volatu 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 



MEDIEVAL LATIN LYRICS 

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 

Nuncviridanisegetes . ... 190 



O blandos ocolos ct mouietos ....... . 11 

O comes amoris, dolor ..... !.'!!.'! 164 

O tttus vita mini dufotas. o mare ......... 6 

OmetoeUft.mihihftbitetiodulds.AmftU ........ 96 

O quanta quli stint ilia sabbata ......... 161 

O recta* potent ............ 60 

O tr&tia seola priora ........... 1M 

Obmittamu* stadia ........... SOS 

Omoe genus dcmonionim .......... 198 

Panrula tacuro tecttur xnihi culmine sedes ....... 6 

Pboebd ciaro nonoum orto iubare ......... 118 

Plebt angelica ............ 140 

Potatores exqukiy ' ........... 164 

Prata lam rideat omnia ........... 60 

Pulchia comis annisque 4fi^rt ......... 90 

r _ 9 to dextra mini rapuit, lutdnia ........ 6 

kwenam discon foedera rerum ......... 46 

litnoxfultill* ........... SO 

i color ilia vadit ........... 10 



Rflfisnfimiraotistimi ........... 68 

Sahre, w optatum ............ 189 

SiPboebisorores ............ 16 

Sivfrceliiiuratonanti. ........... M 

Sic ma* f ata caoe&do solor .......... 966 

SttBOsmadiunobisdelecte .......... 19 

Solus ad victimam prooedis, Domine ........ 166 

Somnia, quae mentet ludunt .......... 16 

Stapet tergwninui novo ........... 61 

Summi ngU archanle ........... 60 

Smrttztt Onrfctu* *oTvenu vwpere noctis ........ 116 

Susoipt Flo* florom ........... ffl 

Te vifiians oculb animo te nocte requiro ........ 99 

Tampora lapaa volant ........... 66 

Tempera titolitoxnihl Candida llliafermit ....... M 

Temptu ett iocundxim ........... fM 

Terra iam pandit fmnium .......... 906 

Uzor vivaoiui nt vizixnus >..., 11 

Vel ooalotfus putter ........... 166 

Ver a vttni voces aperit ........... M 

Ver erat et biaodo mordentla frifora seosu ....... H 

Verttas wttatum ........ .... 196 

VetUoat iihw tenera merorcm ......... 149 

Vl^, meae rires kstarutnque anchora rerum ....... 101 

Vote virum vivero vfailtter .......... 998 



342 



Printed in Great Britain by 

RICHARD CLAY AND COMPANY, LTD. 
BUNG AY 

Suffolk