Nunc me, nunc verò desertum, extrema secutum 15 20 25 Ipsaque supplicia inspiciens, mortemque severam, 30 335 XVII. MEDITATIONES. D ESERE jam, anima, lectulum soporis, Intus cor efferveat facibus amoris, Recolens mirifica gesta Salvatoris. Mens, affectus, ratio, simul convenite, 5 Occupari frivolis ultra jam nolite; Dum pertractat animus sacramenta vitæ. XVII. Bibl. Max. Patrum, v. 27, p. 444.-These stanzas form part of a very long rhymed contemplation of our Lord's life and death, which is sometimes ascribed to Anselm, bishop of Lucca, a cotemporary of his more illustrious English namesake. He died 1086. These trochaic lines of thirteen syllables long, disposed in mono-rhymed quatrains, were great favorites in the middle ages, and much used for narrative poems; and though, when too long drawn out, wearying in their monotony, and in the necessity of the pause falling in every line at exactly the same place, are capable both of strength and beauty. These Meditations have both; and Du Méril has lately published, for the first time, a long poem on the death of Thomas à Becket (Poésies Popul. Lat., 1847, p. 81,) which will further yield a stanza or two, if such were wanted, in proof. They relate to the feigned reconciliation of Henry with the archbishop, by which he drew him from his safer exile in France : Ægras dat inducias latro viatori, Ut post Syrtes mittitur in Charybdim navis, Ut laxatis laqueis inescatur avis, Sic remisit exulem malè pax suävis, Miscens crucis poculum sub verborum favis. Jesu mi dulcissime, Domine cœlorum, Te de cœlis caritas traxit animarum, Tristatur lætitia, salus infirmatur, Oh mira dignatio pii Salvatoris, Ego heu! superbio, tu humiliaris; 10 15 20 25 ST BERNARD. T Bernard, born in 1091, of a noble family, at Fontaine in 1115 first abbot of Clairvaux. He died Aug. 20, 1153. There have been other men, Augustine and Luther for instance, who by their words and writings have ploughed deeper and more lasting furrows in the great field of the Church, but probably no man during his lifetime ever exercised a personal influence in Christendom equal to his; who was the stayer of popular commotions, the queller of heresies, the umpire between princes and kings, the counsellor of popes, the founder, for so he may be esteemed, of an important religious order, the author of a crusade. Besides all deeper qualities which would not alone have sufficed to effect all this, he was gifted by nature and grace with rarest powers of persuasion, (Doctor mellifluus as he was rightly called, though the honey perhaps was sometimes a little too honied,) and seems to have exercised a wellnigh magical influence upon all those with whom he was brought into contact. The hymns which usually go by his name were judged away from him on very slight and insufficient grounds, by Mabillon, in his edition of St Bernard's works. But with the exception of the Cur mundus militat, there is no reason to doubt the correctness of their attribution to him. All internal evidence is in favour of him as their author. If he did not write, it is not easy to guess who could have written, them; and indeed they bear profoundly the stamp of his mind, being only inferior in beauty to his prose. XVIII. ORATIO RHYTHMICA AD CHRISTUM A CRUCE PENDENTEM. 1. AD PEDES. ALVE, mundi salutare, S Salve salve, Jesu care, Cruci tuæ me aptare Oh quàm mundum hic te cerno! Sis facilis ad veniam. Clavos pedum, plagas duras, 5 10 XVIII. Bernardi Opp., ed. Bened., Paris, 1719, v. 2, pp. 916, 919. The full title of the poem from which two of its seven portions, each however complete in itself, are here drawn, is commonly as follows: Rhythmica oratio ad unum quodlibet membrorum Christi patientis, et à cruce pendentis. I have chosen these two, the first and the last, because in a composition of such length, extending to nearly four hundred lines, it was necessary to make some selection; yet its other divisions are of no inferior depth or beauty: quæ omnia, as Daniel says with merest truth, omnes divini amoris spirant æstus atque incendia, ut nil possit suavius dulciusque excogitari. |