136 ’Mid ice, with olives black; who gives to seeds
Their increments of vigour various;
And with her young’s soft shadowings protects
The mother. Good it is all things to know
Which wondrous are in nature, that it may
35
Be granted us to recognise through all
The true Lord, who light, seas, sky, earth prepared,
And decked with varied star the new-made world;7
And first bade beasts and birds to issue forth;
And gave the ocean’s waters to be stocked
40
With fish; and gathered in a mass the sands,
With living creatures fertilized. Such strains
With stately8 muses will I spin, and waves
Healthful will from their fountainheads disclose:
And may this strain of mine the gladsome shower
45
Catch, which from placid clouds doth come, and flows
Deeply and all unsought into men’s souls,
And guide it into our new-turnèd lands
In copious rills.9
Now come: if any one
Still ignorant of God, and knowing naught
50
Of life to come,10 would fain attain to touch
The care-effacing living nymph, and through
The swift waves’ virtue his lost life repair,
And ’scape the penalties of flame eterne,11
And rather win the guerdons of the life
55
To come, let such remember God is One,
Alone the object of our prayers; who ’neath
His threshold hath the whole world poised; Himself
Eternally abiding, and to be
Alway for aye; holding the ages12 all;
60
Alone, before all ages;12 unbegotten,
Limitless God; who holds alone His seat
Supernal; supereminent alone
Above high heavens; omnipotent alone;
Whom all things do obey; who for Himself
65
Formed, when it pleased Him, man for aye; and gave
Him to be pastor of beasts tame, and lord
Of wild; who by a word13 could stretch forth heaven;
And with a word could solid earth suspend;
And quicklier than word14 had the seas wave
70
Disjoined;15 and man’s dear form with His own hands
Did love to mould; and furthermore did will
His own fair likeness16 to exist in him;
And by His Spirit on his countenance
The breath17 of life did breathe.
Unmindful he
75
Of God, such guilt rashly t’ incur! Beyond
The warning’s range he was not ought to touch.18
One fruit illicit, whence he was to know
Forthwith how to discriminate alike
Evil and equity, God him forbade
80
To touch. What functions of the world19 did God
Permit to man, and sealed the sweet sweet pledge
Of His own love! and jurisdiction gave
O’er birds, and granted him both deep and soil
To tame, and mandates useful did impart
85
Of dear salvation! ’Neath his sway He gave
The lands, the souls of flying things, the race
Feathered, and every race, or tame or wild,
Of beasts, and the sea’s race, and monster-forms
Shapeless of swimming things. But since so soon
90
The primal man by primal crime transgressed
The law, and left the mandates of the Lord
(Led by a wife who counselled all the ills),
By death he ’gan to perish. Woman ’twas
Who sin’s first ill committed, and (the law
95
Transgressed) deceived her husband. Eve, induced
By guile, the thresholds oped to death, and proved
To her own self, with her whole race as well,
A procreatrix of funereal woes.
Hence unanticipated wickedness,
100
Hence death, like seed, for aye, is scattered. Then
More frequent grew atrocious deed; and toil
More savage set the corrupt orb astir:
(This lure the crafty serpent spread, inspired
By envy’s self:) then peoples more invent
105
Practices of ill deeds; and by ill deeds
Gave birth to seeds of wickedness.
And so
The only Lord, whose is the power supreme,
137 Who o’er the heights the summits holds of heaven
Supreme, and in exalted regions dwells
110
In lofty light for ages, mindful too
Of present time, and of futurity
Prescient beforehand, keeps the progeny
Of ill-desert, and all the souls which move
By reason’s force much-erring man — nor less
115
Their tardy bodies governs He — against
The age decreed, so soon as, stretched in death,
Men lay aside their ponderous limbs, and, light
As air, shall go, their earthly bonds undone,
And take in diverse parts their proper spheres.
120
(But some He bids be forthwith by glad gales
Recalled to life, and be in secret kept
To wait the decreed law’s awards, until
Their bodies with resuscitated limbs
Revive.20) Then shall men ’gin to weigh the awards
125
Of their first life, and on their crime and faults
To think, and keep them for their penalties
Which will be far from death; and mindful grow
Of pious duties, by God’s judgments taught;
To wait expectant for their penalty
130
And their descendants’, fruit of their own crime;
Or else to live wholly the life of sheep, (Cf. Psa_49:14 (Psalm 48:15, LXX))
Without a name; and in God’s ear, now deaf,
Pour unavailing weeping.
Shall not God
Almighty, ‘neath whose law are all things ruled,
135
Be able after death life to restore?
Or is there ought which the creation’s Lord
Unable seems to do? If, darkness chased,
He could outstretch the light, and could compound
All the world’s mass by a word suddenly,
140
And raise by potent voice all things from nought,
Why out of somewhat21 could He not compound
The well-known shape which erst had been, which He
Had moulded formerly; and bid the form
Arise assimilated to Himself
145
Again? Since God’s are all things, earth the more
Gives Him all back; for she will, when He bids,
Unweave whate’er she woven had before.
If one, perhaps, laid on sepulchral pyre,
The flame consumed; or one in its blind waves
150
The ocean have dismembered; if of one
The entrails have, in hunger, satisfied
The fishes; or on any’s limbs wild beasts
Have fastened cruel death; or any’s blood,
His body reft by birds, unhid have lain:
155
Yet shall they not wrest from the mighty Lord
His latest dues. Need is that men appear
Quickened from death ’fore God, and at His bar
Stand in their shapes resumed. Thus arid seeds
Are dropt into the vacant lands, and deep
160
In the fixt furrows die and rot: and hence
Is not their surface22 animated soon
With stalks repaired? and do they23 not grow strong
And yellow with the living grains? and, rich
With various usury,24 new harvests rise
165
In mass? The stars all set, and, born again,
Renew their sheen; and day dies with its light
Lost in dense night; and now night wanes herself
As light unveils creation presently;
And now another and another day
170
Rises from its own stars; and the sun sets,
Bright as it is with splendour-bearing light;
Light perishes when by the coming eve
The world25 is shaded; and the phoenix lives
By her own soot26 renewed, and presently
175
Rises, again a bird, O wondrous sight!
After her burnings! The bare tree in time
Shoots with her leaves; and once more are her boughs
Curved by the germen of the fruits.
While then
The world27 throughout is trembling at God’s voice,
180
And deeply movèd are the high air’s powers,28
Then comes a crash unwonted, then ensue
Heaven’s mightiest murmurs, on the approach of God,
The whole world’s29 Judge! His countless ministers
Forthwith conjoin their rushing march, and God
185
138 With majesty supernal fence around.
Angelic bands will from the heaven descend
To earth; all, God’s host, whose is faculty
Divine; in form and visage spirits all
Of virtue: in them fiery vigour is;
190
Rutilant are their bodies; heaven’s might
Divine about them flashes; the whole orb
Hence murmurs; and earth, trembling to her depths
(Or whatsoe’er her bulk is30), echoes back
The roar, parturient of men, whom she,
195
Being bidden, will with grief upyield.31 All stand
In wonderment. At last disturbed are
The clouds, and the stars move and quake from height
Of sudden power.32 When thus God comes, with voice
Of potent sound, at once throughout all realms
200
The sepulchres are burst, and every ground
Outpours bones from wide chasms, and opening sand
Outbelches living peoples; to the hair33
The members cleave; the bones inwoven are
With marrow; the entwined sinews rule
205
The breathing bodies; and the veins ’gin throb
With simultaneously infused blood:
And, from their caves dismissed, to open day
Souls are restored, and seek to find again
Each its own organs, as at their own place
210
They rise. O wondrous faith! Hence every age
Shoots forth; forth shoots from ancient dust the host
Of dead. Regaining light, there rise again
Mothers, and sires, and high-souled youths, and boys,
And maids unwedded; and deceased old men
215
Stand by with living souls; and with the cries
Of babes the groaning orb resounds.34 Then tribes
Various from their lowest seats will come:
Bands of the Easterns; those which earth’s extreme
Sees; those which dwell in the downsloping clime
220
Of the mid-world, and hold the frosty star’s
Riphaean citadels. Every colonist
Of every land stands frighted here: boor;
The son of Atreus35 with his diadem
Of royalty put off; the rich man mixt
225
Coequally in line with pauper peers.
Deep tremor everywhere: then groans the orb
With prayers; and peoples stretching forth their hands
Grow stupid with the din!
The Lord Himself
Seated, is bright with light sublime; and fire
230
Potent in all the Virtues36 flashing shines.
And on His high-raised throne the Heavenly One
Coruscates from His seat; with martyrs hemmed
(A dazzling troop of men), and by His seers
Elect accompanied (whose bodies bright
235
Effulgent are with snowy stoles), He towers
Above them. And now priests in lustrous robes
Attend, who wear upon their marked37 front
Wreaths golden-red; and all submissive kneel
And reverently adore. The cry of all
240
Is one: “O Holy, Holy, Holy, God!”
To these38 the Lord will mandate give, to range
The people in twin lines; and orders them
To set apart by number the depraved;
While such as have His biddings followed
245
With placid words He calls, and bids them, clad
With vigour — death quite conquered — ever dwell
Amid light’s inextinguishable airs,
Stroll through the ancients’ ever blooming realm,
Through promised wealth, through ever sunny swards,
250
And in bright body spend perpetual life.
A place there is, belovèd of the Lord,
In Eastern coasts, where light is bright and clear,
And healthier blows the breeze; day is eterne,
Time changeless: ’tis a region set apart
255
By God, most rich in plains, and passing blest,
139 In the meridian39 of His cloudless seat.
There gladsome is the air, and is in light
Ever to be; soft is the wind, and breathes
Life-giving blasts; earth, fruitful with a soil
260
Luxuriant, bears all things; in the meads
Flowers shed their fragrance; and upon the plains
The purple — not in envy — mingles all
With golden-ruddy light. One gladsome flower,
With its own lustre clad, another clothes;
265
And here with many a seed the dewy fields
Are dappled, and the snowy tilths are crisped
With rosy flowers. No region happier
Is known in other spots; none which in look
Is fairer, or in honour more excels.
270
Never in flowery gardens are there born
Such lilies, nor do such upon our plains
Outbloom; nor does the rose so blush, what time,
New-born, ’tis opened by the breeze; nor is
The purple with such hue by Tyrian dye
275
Imbued. With coloured pebbles beauteous gleams
The gem: here shines the prasinus;40 there glows
The carbuncle; and giant-emerald
Is green with grassy light. Here too are born
The cinnamons, with odoriferous twigs;
280
And with dense leaf gladsome amomum joins
Its fragrance. Here, a native, lies the gold
Of radiant sheen; and lofty groves reach heaven
In blooming time, and germens fruitfullest
Burden the living boughs. No glades like these
285
Hath Ind herself forth-stretcht; no tops so dense
Rears on her mount the pine; nor with a shade
So lofty-leavèd is her cypress crisped;
Nor better in its season blooms her bough
In spring-tide. Here black firs on lofty peak
290
Bloom; and the only woods that know no hail
Are green eternally: no foliage falls;
At no time fails the flower. There, too, there blooms
A flower as red as Tarsine purple is:
A rose, I ween, it is (red hue it has,
295
An odour keen); such aspect on its leaves
It wears, such odour breathes. A tree it41 stands,
With a new flower, fairest in fruits; a crop
Life-giving, dense, its happy strength does yield.
Rich honies with green cane their fragrance join,
300
And milk flows potable in runnels full;
And with whate’er that sacred earth is green,
It all breathes life; and there Crete’s healing gift42
Is sweetly redolent. There, with smooth tide,
Flows in the placid plains a fount: four floods
305
Thence water parted lands.43 The garden robed
With flowers, I wot, keeps ever spring; no cold
Of wintry star varies the breeze; and earth,
After her birth-throes, with a kindlier blast
Repairs. Night there is none; the stars maintain
310
Their darkness; angers, envies, and dire greed
Are absent; and out-shut is fear, and cares
Driven from the threshold. Here the Evil One
Is homeless; he is into worthy courts
Out-gone, nor is’t e’er granted him to touch
315
The glades forbidden. But here ancient faith
Rests in elect abode; and life here treads,
Joying in an eternal covenant;
And health44 without a care is gladsome here
In placid tilths, ever to live and be
320
Ever in light.
Here whosoe’er hath lived
Pious, and cultivant of equity
And goodness; who hath feared the thundering God
With mind sincere; with sacred duteousness
Tended his parents; and his other life45
325
Spent ever crimeless; or who hath consoled
With faithful help a friend in indigence;
Succoured the over-toiling needy one,
As orphans’ patron, and the poor man’s aid;
Rescued the innocent, and succoured them
330
When prest with accusation; hath to guests
His ample table’s pledges given; hath done
All things divinely; pious offices
Enjoined; done hurt to none; ne’er coveted
Another’s: such as these, exulting all
335
In divine praises, and themselves at once
Exhorting, raise their voices to the stars;
Thanksgivings to the Lord in joyous wise
They psalming celebrate; and they shall go
140 Their harmless way with comrade messengers.
340
When ended hath the Lord these happy gifts,
And likewise sent away to realms eterne
The just, then comes a pitiable crowd
Wailing its crimes; with parching tears it pours
All groans effusely, and attests46 in acts
345
With frequent ululations. At the sight
Of flames, their merit’s due, and stagnant pools
Of fire, wrath’s weapons, they ’gin tremble all.47
Them an angelic host, upsnatching them,
Forbids to pray, forbids to pour their cries
350
(Too late!) with clamour loud: pardon withheld,
Into the lowest bottom they are hurled!
O miserable men! how oft to you
Hath Majesty divine made itself known!
The sounds of heaven ye have heard; have seen
355
Its lightnings; have experienced its rains
Assiduous; its ires of winds and hail!
How often nights and days serene do make
Your seasons — God’s gifts — fruitful with fair yields
Roses were vernal; the grain’s summer-tide
360
Failed not; the autumn variously poured
Its mellow fruits; the rugged winter brake
The olives, icy though they were: ’twas God
Who granted all, nor did His goodness fail.
At God earth trembled; on His voice the deep
365
Hung, and the rivers trembling fled and left
Sands dry; and every creature everywhere
Confesses God! Ye (miserable men!)
Have heaven’s Lord and earth’s denied; and oft
(Horrible!) have God’s heralds put to flight;48
370
And rather slain the just with slaughter fell;
And, after crime, fraud ever hath in you
Inhered. Ye then shall reap the natural fruit
Of your iniquitous sowing. That God is
Ye know; yet are ye wont to laugh at Him.
375
Into deep darkness ye shall go of fire
And brimstone; doomed to suffer glowing ires
In torments just.49 God bids your bones descend
To50 penalty eternal; go beneath
The ardour of an endless raging hell;51
380
Be urged, a seething mass, through rotant pools
Of flame; and into threatening flame He bids
The elements convert; and all heaven’s fire
Descend in clouds.
Then greedy Tartarus
With rapid fire enclosèd is; and flame
385
Is fluctuant within with tempest waves;
And the whole earth her whirling embers blends!
There is a flamy furrow; teeth acute
Are turned to plough it, and for all the years52
The fiery torrent will be armed: with force
390
Tartarean will the conflagrations gnash
Their teeth upon theworld.53 There are they scorched
In seething tide with course precipitate
Hence flee; thence back are borne in sharp career;
The savage flame’s ire meets them fugitive!
395
And now at length they own the penalty
Their own, the natural issue of their crime.
And now the reeling earth, by not a swain
Possest, is by the sea’s profundity
Prest, at her farthest limit, where the sun
400
(His ray out-measured) divides the orb,
And where, when traversed is the world,53 the stars
Are hidden. Ether thickens. O’er the light
Spreads sable darkness; and the latest flames
Stagnate in secret rills. A place there is
405
Whose nature is with sealed penalties
Fiery, and a dreadful marsh white-hot
With heats infernal, where, in furnaces
Horrific, penal deed roars loud, and seethes,
And, rushing into torments, is up-caught
410
By the flame’s vortex wide; by savage wave
And surge the turbid sand all mingled is
With miry bottom. Hither will be sent,
Groaning, the captive crowd of evil ones,
And wickedness (the sinful body’s train),
415
To burn! Great is the beating there of breasts,
By bellowing of grief accompanied;
Wild is the hissing of the flames, and thence
The ululation of the sufferers!
And flames, and limbs sonorous,54 will outrise
420
Afar: more fierce will the fire burn; and up
To th’ upper air the groaning will be borne.
Then human progeny its bygone deeds
Of ill will weigh; and will begin to stretch
Heavenward its palms; and then will wish to know
425
141 The Lord, whom erst it would not know, what time
To know Him had proved useful to them. There
His life’s excesses, handiworks unjust,
And crimes of savage mind, each will confess,
And at the knowledge of the impious deeds
430
Of his own life will shudder. And now first, I soul
Whoe’er erewhile cherished ill thoughts of God:
Had worshipped stones unsteady, lyingly
Pretending to divinity; hath e’er
Made sacred to gore-stainèd images
435
Altars; hath voiceless pictured figures feared;
Hath slender shades of false divinity
Revered; whome’er ill error onward hath
Seduced; whoe’er was an adulterer,
Or with the sword had slain his sons; whoe’er
440
Had stalked in robbery; whoe’er by fraud
His clients had deferred; whoe’er with mind
Unfriendly had behaved himself, or stained
His palms with blood of men, or poison mixt
Wherein death lurked, or robed with wicked guise
445
His breast, or at his neighbour’s ill, or gain
Iniquitous, was wont to joy; whoe’er
Committed whatsoever wickedness
Of evil deeds: him mighty heat shall rack,
And bitter fire; and these all shall endure,
450
In passing painful death, their punishment.
Thus shall the vast crowd lie of mourning men!
This oft as holy prophets sang of old,
And (by God’s inspiration warned) oft told
The future, none (’tis pity!) none (alas!)
455
Did lend his ears. But God Almighty willed
His guerdons to be known, and His law’s threats
’Mid multitudes of such like signs promulged.
He ’stablished them55 by sending prophets more,
These likewise uttering words divine; and some,
460
Roused from their sleep, He bids go from their tombs
Forth with Himself, when He, His own tomb burst,
Had risen. Many ’wildered were, indeed,
To see the tombs agape, and in clear light
Corpses long dead appear; and, wondering
465
At their discourses pious, dulcet words!
Starward they stretch their palms at the mere sound,56
And offer God and so-victorious Christ
Their gratulating homage. Certain ’tis
That these no more re-sought their silent graves,
470
Nor were retained within earth’s bowels shut;57
But the remaining host reposes now
In lowliest beds, until — time’s circuit run —
That great day do arrive.
Now all of you
Own the true Lord, who alone makes this soul
475
Of ours to see His light,58 and can the same
(To Tartarus sent) subject to penalties
And to whom all the power of life and death
Is open. Learn that God can do whate’er
He list; for ’tis enough for Him to will,
480
And by mere speaking He achieves the deed;
And Him nought plainly, by withstanding, checks.
He is my God alone, to whom I trust
With deepest senses. But, since death concludes
Every career, let whoe’er is to-day
485
Bethink him over all things in his mind.
And thus, while life remains, while ’tis allowed
To see the light and change your life, before
The limit of allotted age o’ertake
You unawares, and that last day, which59 is
490
By death’s law fixt, your senseless eyes do glaze,
Seek what remains worth seeking: watchful be
For dear salvation; and run down with ease
And certainty the good course. Wipe away
By pious sacred rites your past misdeeds
495
Which expiation need; and shun the storms,
The too uncertain tempests, of the world.60
Then turn to right paths, and keep sanctities.
Hence from your gladsome minds depravèd crime
Quite banish; and let long-inveterate fault
500
Be washed forth from your breast; and do away
Wicked ill-stains contracted; and appease
Dread God by prayers eternal; and let all
Most evil mortal things to living good
Give way: and now at once a new life keep
505
Without a crime; and let your minds begin
To use themselves to good things and to true:
And render ready voices to God’s praise.
Thus shall your piety find better things
All growing to a flame; thus shall ye, too
510
Receive the gifts of the celestial life;61
And, to long age, shall ever live with God,
Seeing the starry kingdom’s golden joys.
FOOTNOTES
1 The reader is requested to bear in mind, in reading this piece, tedious in its elaborate struggles after effect, that the constant repetitions of words and expressions with which his patience will be tried, are due to the original. It was irksome to reproduce them; but fidelity is a translator’s first law.
2 Luciferas.
3 Helicon is not named in the original, but it seems to be meant.
4 i.e., in another clime or continent. The writer is (or feigns to be) an African. Helicon, of course, is in Europe.
5 Virtus.
6 Saeculo.
7 Mundum.
8 Compositis.
9 I have endeavoured to give some intelligible sense to these lines; but the absence of syntax in the original, as it now stands, makes it necessary to guess at the meaning as best one may.
10 Venturi aevi.
11 “But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne.” — Shakespeare, Macbeth, act iii. scene 2.
12 Saecula.
13 Sermone tenus: i.e., the exertion (so to speak) needed to do such mighty works only extended to the uttering of a speech; no more was requisite. See for a similar allusion to the contrast between the making of other things and the making of man, the “Genesis, lines 30-39”.
14 Dicto.
15 i.e., from the solid mass of earth. See Gen_1:9, Gen_1:10.
16 Faciem.
17 “Auram,” or “breeze.”
18 “Immemor ille Dei temere committere tale!
Non ultra monitum quidquam contingeret.”
Whether I have hit the sense here I know not. In this and in other passages I have punctuated for myself.
19 Munera mundi.
20 These lines, again, are but a guess at the meaning of the original, which is as obscure as defiance of grammar can well make it. The sense seems to be, in brief, that while the vast majority are, immediately on their death, shut up in Hades to await the “decreed age,” i.e., the day of judgment, some, like the children raised by Elijah and Elisha, the man who revived on touching Elisha’s bones, and the like, are raised to die again. Lower down it will be seen that the writer believes that the saints who came out of their graves after our Lord’s resurrection (Mat_27:51-54) did not die again.
21 i.e., the dust into which our bodies turn.
22 i.e., the surface or ridge of the furrows.
23 i.e., the furrows.
24 “Some thirty-fold, some sixty-fold, some an hundred-fold.” See the parable of the sower.
25 Mundo.
26 Fuligine.
27 Mundo.
28 Virtutibus. Perhaps the allusion is to Eph_2:2, Mat_24:29, Luk_21:26.
29 Mundi.
30 Vel quanta est. If this be the right sense, the words are probably inserted, because the conflagration of “the earth and the works that are therein” predicted in 2Pe_3:10, and referred to lower down in this piece, is supposed to have begun, and thus the “depths” of the earth are supposed to be already diminishing.
31 I have ventured to alter one letter of the Latin; and for “quos reddere jussa docebit,” read “quos reddere jussa dolebit.” If the common reading be retained, the only possible reading seems to be “whom she will teach to render (to God) His commands,” i.e., to render obedience to them; or else, “to render (to God) what they are bidden to render,” i.e., an account of themselves; and earth, as their mother, giving them birth out of her womb, is said to teach them to do this. But the emendation, which is at all events simple, seems to give a better sense: “being bidden to render the dead, whom she is keeping, up, earth will grieve at the throes it causes her, but will do it.”
32 Subitae virtutis ab alto.
33 Comis, here “the heads.”
34 This passage is imitated from Virgil, Aen., vi. 305 sqq.; Georg., iv. 475 sqq.
35 i.e., “the king.” The “Atridae” of Homer are referred to, — Agamemnon “king of men,” and Menelaus.
36 Or, “Powers.”
37 The allusion seems to be to Eze_9:4, Eze_9:6, Rev_7:3 et seqq., Rev_20:3, Rev_20:4, and to the inscribed mitre of the Jewish high priest, see Exo_28:36, Exo_29:30.
38 I have corrected “his” for “hic.” If the latter be retained, it would seem to mean “hereon.”
39 Cardine, i.e., the hinge as it were upon which the sun turns in his course.
40 See the “Genesis, Line 73”.
41 Or, “there.” The question is, whether a different tree is meant, or the rose just spoken of.
42 This seems to be marshmallows.
43 Here again it is plain that the writer is drawing his description from what we read of the garden of Eden.
44 “Salus,” health (probably) in its widest sense, both bodily and mental; or perhaps “safety,” “salvation.”
45 Reliquam vitam, i.e., apparently his life in all other relations; unless it mean his life after his parents’s death, which seems less likely.
46 i.e., “appeals to.” So Burke: “I attest the former, I attest the coming generations.” This “attesting of its acts” seems to refer to Mat_25:44. It appeals to them in hope of mitigating its doom.
47 This seems to be the sense. The Latin stands thus: “Flammas pro meritis, stagnantia tela tremiscunt.”
48 Or, “banished.”
49 I adopt the correction (suggested in Migne) of justis for justas.
50 This is an extraordinary use for the Latin dative; and even if the meaning be “for (i.e., to suffer) penalty eternal,” it is scarcely less so.
51 Gehennae
52 Or, “in all the years:” but see note 50.
53 Mundo.
54 “Artusque sonori,” i.e., probably the arms and hands with which (as has been suggested just before) the sufferers beat their unhappy breasts.
55 i.e., the “guerdons” and the “threats.”
56 “Ipsa voce,” unless it mean “voice and all,” i.e., and their voice as well as their palms.
57 See note 20.
58 Here again a correction suggested in Migne’s ed., of “suam lucem” for “sua luce,” is adopted.
59 “Qui” is read here, after Migne’s suggestion, for “quia;” and Oehler’s and Migne’s punctuation both are set aside.
60 Mundi.
61 Or, “assume the functions of the heavenly life.”
5. Five Books in Reply to Marcion.
(Author Uncertain.)
Book I. Of the Divine Unity, and the Resurrection of the Flesh.
Part I. — Of the Divine Unity.
After the Evil One’s impiety
Profound, and his life-grudging mind, entrapped
Seduced men with empty hope, it laid
Them bare, by impious suasion to false trust
5
In him, — not with impunity, indeed;
For he forthwith, as guilty of the deed,
And author rash of such a wickedness,
Received deserved maledictions. Thus,
Thereafter, maddened, he, most desperate foe,
10
Did more assail and instigate men’s minds
In darkness sunk. He taught them to forget
The Lord, and leave sure hope, and idols vain
Follow, and shape themselves a crowd of gods,
Lots, auguries, false names of stars, the show
15
Of being able to o’errule the births
Of embryos by inspecting entrails, and
Expecting things to come, by hardihood
Of dreadful magic’s renegadoes led,
Wondering at a mass of feignèd lore;
20
And he impelled them headlong to spurn life,
Sunk in a criminal insanity;
To joy in blood; to threaten murders fell;
To love the wound, then, in their neighbour’s flesh;
Or, burning, and by pleasure’s heat entrapped,
25
To transgress nature’s covenants, and stain
Pure bodies, manly sex, with an embrace
Unnameable, and uses feminine
Mingled in common contact lawlessly;
Urging embraces chaste, and dedicate
30
To generative duties, to be held
For intercourse obscene for passion’s sake.
Such in time past his deeds, assaulting men,
Through the soul’s lurking-places, with a flow
Of scorpion-venom, — not that men would blame
35
Him, for they followed of their own accord:
His suasion was in guile; in freedom man
Performed it.
Whileas the perfidious one
Continuously through the centuries1
Is breathing such ill fumes, and into hearts
40
Seduced injecting his own counselling,
And hoping in his folly (alas!) to find
Forgiveness of his wickedness, unware
What sentence on his deed is waiting him;
With words of wisdom’s weaving,2 and a voice
45
Presaging from God’s Spirit, speak a host
Of prophets. Publicly he3 does not dare
Nakedly to speak evil of the Lord,
Hoping by secret ingenuity
He possibly may lurk unseen. At length
50
The soul’s Light4 as the thrall of flesh is held;
The hope of the despairing, mightier
Than foe, enters the lists; the Fashioner,
The Renovator, of the body He;
True Glory of the Father; Son of God;
55
Author unique; a Judge and Lord He came,
The orb’s renowned King; to the opprest
Prompt to give pardon, and to loose the bound;
Whose friendly aid and penal suffering
Blend God and renewed man in one. With child
60
Is holy virgin: life’s new gate opes; words
Of prophets find their proof, fulfilled by facts;
Priests5 leave their temples, and — a star their guide —
Wonder the Lord so mean a birth should choose.
Waters — sight memorable! — turn to wine;
65
Eyes are restored to blind; fiends trembling cry,
Outdriven by His bidding, and own Christ!
All limbs, already rotting, by a word
Are healed; now walks the lame; the deaf forthwith
Hears hope; the maimed extends his hand; the dumb
70
Speaks mighty words: sea at His bidding calms,
Winds drop; and all things recognise the Lord:
Confounded is the foe, and yields, though fierce,
Now triumphed over, to unequal6 arms!
When all his enterprises now revoked
75
He7 sees; the flesh, once into ruin sunk,
143 Now rising; man — death vanquisht quite — to heavens
Soaring; the peoples sealed with holy pledge
Outpoured;8 the work and envied deeds of might
Marvellous;9 and hears, too, of penalties
80
Extreme, and of perpetual dark, prepared
For himself by the Lord by God’s decree
Irrevocable; naked and unarmed,
Damned, vanquisht, doomed to perish in a death
Perennial, guilty now, and sure that he
85
No pardon has, a last impiety
Forthwith he dares, — to scatter everywhere
A word for ears to shudder at, nor meet
For voice to speak. Accosting men cast off
From God’s community,10 men wandering
90
Without the light, found mindless, following
Things earthly, them he teaches to become
Depraved teachers of depravity.
By11 them he preaches that there are two Sires,
And realms divided: ill’s cause is the Lord12
95
Who built the orb, fashioned breath-quickened flesh,
And gave the law, and by the seers’ voice spake.
Him he affirms not good, but owns Him just;
Hard, cruel, taking pleasure fell in war;
In judgment dreadful, pliant to no prayers.
100
His suasion tells of other one, to none
E’er known, who nowhere is, a deity
False, nameless, constituting nought, and who
Hath spoken precepts none. Him he calls good;
Who judges none, but spares all equally,
105
And grudges lit to none. No judgment waits
The guilty; so he says, bearing about
A gory poison with sweet honey mixt
For wretched men. That flesh can rise — to which
Himself was cause of ruin, which he spoiled
110
Iniquitously with contempt (whence,13 cursed,
He hath grief without end), its ever-foe, —
He doth deny; because with various wound
Life to expel and the salvation whence
He fell he strives: and therefore says that Christ
115
Came suddenly to earth,14 but was not made,
By any compact, partner of the flesh;
But Spirit-form, and body feigned beneath
A shape imaginary, seeks to mock
Men with a semblance that what is not is.
120
Does this, then, become God, to sport with men
By darkness led? to act an impious lie?
Or falsely call Himself a man? He walks,
Is carried, clothed, takes due rest, handled is,
Suffers, is hung and buried: man’s are all
125
Deeds which, in holy body conversant,
But sent by God the Father, who hath all
Created, He did perfect properly,
Reclaiming not another’s but His own;
Discernible to peoples who of old
130
Were hoping for Him by His very work,
And through the prophets’ voice to the round world15
Best known: and now they seek an unknown Lord,
Wandering in death’s threshold manifest,
And leave behind the known. False is their faith,
135
False is their God, deceptive their reward,
False is their resurrection, death’s defeat
False, vain their martyrdoms, and e’en Christ’s name