MAUBURN.

OHN Mauburn was born at Brussels in 1460, and died

JOHN

Abbot of the Cloister of Livry, not far from Paris, in 1502. He was the author of several ascetic treatises, among others the Rosetum Spirituale, from which the following hymn is derived.

X.

DE NATIVITATE DOMINI.

HEU!

EU! que Creator,
EU! quid jaces stabulo,

Vagiens cunabulo,

Mundi reparator?

X. Mauburnus, Rosetum Spirituale, Duaci, 1620, p. 416; Corner, Prompt. Devot., p. 280; Daniel, Thes. Hymnol., v. 1, p. 335. These three stanzas are taken from a longer poem consisting of thirteen in all, which commences :

Eja, mea anima,
Bethlehem eamus.

I have not selected them, for they had long since been separated from the context, and constituted into a Christmas hymn-a great favourite, it would seem, in the early reformed Churches, so long as the practice of singing Latin compositions survived among them. It still occasionally retains a place in the German hymn-books, but now in an old translation which commences thus:

Warum liegt im Krippelein

As this hymn sometimes appears with a text considerably different

from that here presented, I may say that mine has been obtained, not from any secondary source, but from the Rosetum itself; not indeed from the original edition, Basle, 1491, which lay not within my reach, but from that referred to above, which has much appearance of having been carefully edited.

XI. DE NATIVITATE DOMINI.

TER fœcundas, o ter jucundas

Beatæ noctis delicias,

Quæ suspiratas e cœlo datas
In terris paris delicias!

Gravem primævæ ob lapsum Evæ
Dum jamjam mundus emoritur,
In carne meus, ut vivat, Deus,
Sol vitæ, mundo suboritur.

Æternum Lumen, immensum Numen
Pannorum vinculis stringitur;

In vili caulâ, exclusus aulâ,
Rex cœli bestiis cingitur.

In cunis jacet, et infans tacet
Verbum, quod loquitur omnia ;
Sol mundi friget, et flamma riget :
Quid sibi volunt hæc omnia?

XI. [Walraff,] Corolla Hymnorum, Coloniæ, 1806, p. 8; Daniel, Thes. Hymnol., v. 2, p. 339.-This pretty poem, for it cannot claim any higher title, is certainly of no very early date, can scarcely be earlier than the fifteenth century, and thus belongs, if I am right in my conjecture, to a period when the fountains of inspiration, at least of that inspiration which has given us the great medieval hymns, were very nearly exhausted.

XII. Corner, Prompt. Devot., p. 367.—There are other poems of a merit perhaps equal or superior to this, for which I have been unable to find room, but the exceeding rarity of the only volume, Corner's Promptuarium Devotionis, in which I have ever met this, has made me prefer it to more obvious compositions. On this very subject of the Eastern Magi we have the much grander lines of Prudentius (Cathemer., xii. 1–76), which rank among the noblest passages of his poetry.

Myrrham ferunt, thus, et aurum,
Plus pensantes, quàm thesaurum,
Typum, sub quo veritas;
Trina dona, tres figuræ:
Rex in auro, Deus in thure,
In myrrhâ mortalitas.

Thuris odor Deitatem,
Auri splendor dignitatem
Regalis potentiæ:

Myrrha caro Verbo nupta,
Per quod manet incorrupta
Caro carens carie.

Tu nos, Christe, ab hâc valle
Duc ad vitam recto calle

Per regum vestigia.

Ubi Patris, ubi Tui,

Et Amoris Sacri, frui

Mereamur gloriâ. Amen.

36. The following lines, blending into a single stanza the twofold homage of the Jewish shepherds and the Gentile sages, were great favourites at and after the Reformation. They form the first stanza of a hymn which only consists of two, and belong probably to the fourteenth century. (Rambach, Anthol. Christl. Gesänge, p. 333.)

Quem pastores laudavere,

Quibus angeli dixere,
"Absit vobis jam timere"

Natus est Rex gloriæ:

Ad quem reges ambulabant,

Aurum, thus, myrrham portabant;

Hæc sincerè immolabant

Leoni victoriæ.