Poems 1 part 2/8

Without the law, the ignorant of the law shall everywhere fall; he who has lapsed within the law shall be judged by the law. The fire, as arbiter, shall run over every work: what the flame shall not have consumed but proved, that shall be repaid with everlasting reward. He who has wrought things to be burned up shall suffer loss, but he himself shall fly forth safe through the fires. Yet the wretch, with the marks of his half-scorched body, shall keep his life, but shall not keep glory; because, overcome in the flesh yet not turned away in mind—even though he had denied to the law the faith it was owed, often rolled down through many crimes—nevertheless, bearing the eternal name of faith, he shall never be banished from the bounds of salvation.

Therefore let us all now, in this present world, while our age runs on and the day of this life lies open, tread the straight paths with firm foot, and not be carried off down the slippery course of the broad way. It is better, contending along the narrow track, to enter in with laborious efforts. The Lord gladly acknowledges the ways of the good, but the headlong road of the wicked shall be destroyed. Why have the nations raged, and why have the peoples plotted vain things? The princes have stood up together with kings, driven against the Lord and against his Christ, bearing frenzied counsels. 'Let us burst their bonds, let us shake off their yokes.' He who abides governing the whole heavens with his eternal sway shall mock them, and shall speak in just anger, and with his terrible word shall throw the wicked into confusion with his threats. 'But I, a King created by him with equal dominion, proclaim the commandment of the Lord upon the nourishing Sion.'

'The Lord himself,' he says, 'said to me: You are my Son; this day have I begotten you. Ask: be my heir over the nations, and let your possession be founded upon all the lands. You have a rod of iron, since by mighty right you rule the swelling peoples over the whole globe; like vessels fashioned of re-baked clay, breaking hearts, that you may reform them to better things. And now behold, all you kings, attend with prostrate minds, and whoever of men govern the serving hearts of others by your judgment and hold the reins of affairs: serve God in trembling, and, being faithful, exult with mingled fear; let there be a concordant discord, joining unlike affections in one breast; lest fear afflict your minds, or joys dissolve them, if, lacking gladness, you tremble at the dread of death.'

Learn righteousness, take up upright manners, and tremble before the just God, rejoice in the kindly One, lest at some time God grow angry, his anger deserved, against the world, and you, driven from the just way, justly perish. From now on hasten to recoil from the wicked way; behold, in a short while, when the great wrath of the Mighty One shall have blazed up, that he may winnow the whole world with the divine examination, and separate the chaff for the fire, the wheat for salvation: then blessed are all who have a sure hope in him. We sat captive by the unknown rivers of dread Babylon, a band of Judea, weeping a pitiable lament. When we drew Sion through our mindful heart, and sighed over an exile deserved from just wrath, there the bank, planted with pliant willows, afforded friendly shadows to the foreign peoples.

There, in the midst of the walls of the Assyrian city, forgetful of our glad voices amid sorrowful silences, we hung up our instruments upon the boughs of the willows. For the grievous wrath gave us bitter grief, in that that impious enemy who had carried us off from our home bade us sing for his delights those songs which were wont to be brought forth in the holy temple. Shall we then sing the divine praises and the songs fitted for chaste choirs, amid barbarous rites and foul tombs, amid altars kindled with deadly fires—alas!—evilly making mirth out of our mourning? And shall we make wanton riot out of the holy rite, sounding mystic songs for the enemy's sport? With what countenance shall we wretches now sing the sacred hymns? In what place does Babylon demand for itself the songs of Sion?

But a foreign land is not fit to merit the song of the Lord; the sacred voice turns away from unworthy ears. If, however, as a more violent lord you press upon your captives, and if your longing is so great to know from us the pious songs of Sion—if you go on to compel me to utter what is not yours, and to tell you what the divine songs of Sion may be—then receive what God the avenger pledges to the captured city. Do not hope, impious one, to rejoice long in this triumph, whereby you bid the sacred hymn be betrayed to you: behold what the hymn of the Lord is, what the songs of Sion are. 'If I shall have forgotten my walls, O city of Jerusalem who are my care, let my right hand become unmindful of me, and let my tongue cleave dry to my jaws, unless I embrace you with eternal love;'

'and unless, at the very beginning of the kingdom promised for the ages, and in the first year of my gladness, I remember to prefer you, Jerusalem, above all lands. Be then mindful of the offspring of Edom, that by a reversed lot it may look with confusion upon our day, when your people shall dwell in glorious Jerusalem with its eternal walls—the city to which the nation, now forgetful of you, threatens cruel destruction, saying: Raze the hateful city to its foundations, and empty it by hand, until no traces are left, the walls reduced to nothing. Unhappy daughter of wretched Babylon, blessed is he who shall requite upon you, on our behalf, your own deeds against us. No less blessed too shall he be who shall seize your little ones and at once dash your pledges against the solid rock.'

If you desire to be made blessed by Babylon's stock being extinguished, break by faith, in the first flames, the crimes swelling up within yourself, for already the rock is near at hand—Christ; in him crush the viperous brood with mighty arms. For Babylon means 'Confusion'; its daughter is the flesh, the mother by sins—a throng harmful to salvation, which draws evil seeds from the body's fibres. This you must conquer, if you would conquer death; for if such enemies, enclosed within your bones, be permitted by growing to take on strength, you shall conquer them only with difficult wrestling: forestall them while small, while still raw from the womb of the heart the infancy of vices creeps through the captured breast among tender limbs—which, unless you guard against it, the earthly offspring, grown in strength, shall slay the soul that is in league with vices.

Spare not, therefore, to slaughter such a band. It will be no crime for you to destroy a nation destined to harm you, and to drench the avenging rock with wicked blood; for the just man rejoices if the impious offspring falls: for more and more is the godly man purified by such slaughter, if he destroys the sins that lord it over his members, and triumphs in Christ over the broken throng of vices. POEM X. TO AUSONIUS, PAULINUS. While in his fourth year in Spain, Paulinus received the four letters mentioned above, and to the first, the third (which has been lost), and the fourth he replies with this poem.

This fourth summer now returns for the hard reapers, and as often the winter has stiffened with grey frost, since no letter has come to me from your lips, nor have I seen any writings marked by your hand—until at last the happy page brought, with its health-bringing little book, gifts long denied, now manifold. For a triple letter bloomed with varied texture, but the threefold many-versed page was a poem. A certain pious solicitude had mingled sweet things, somewhat bitter, with manifold complaints anxious in their censure. But to me your fatherly mildness sat more deeply than the censor's harshness, and I weigh the harsh against the gentle in my mind. Yet these things are to be answered in their proper place, and to be handled with the graver sound of an avenging hexameter. Meanwhile a lighter iambic runs on ahead in a few lines, returning mutual words in its distinct measure.

Now the elegiacs bid you fare well, and, the greeting being uttered, just as they made others their beginning and starting-point, they fall silent. Why, father, do you bid the Muses, banished, return into my care? Hearts dedicated to Christ deny the Camenae and lie not open to Apollo. There was once between you and me—not by equal resources, but by equal zeal—this concord: to rouse deaf Phoebus from his Delphic cave, to call the Muses 'divinities'; and to seek the gift of speech, a gift granted by the gift of God, from the groves or the mountain-ridges. Now another power drives my mind, a greater God; and he demands other manners, requiring back from man his own gift, that we may live for the Father of life. He forbids us to be at leisure for vain things, whether in idleness or in business, and for fabulous letters, that we may obey his laws and discern his light:

—a light which the cunning craft of the sophists, and the art of the rhetoricians, and the fictions of the poets becloud, men who steep hearts with falsehoods and vanities, and only equip tongues, bringing nothing whereby to confer salvation, nothing that may uncover the truth. For what good or true thing could they hold who do not hold the Head of the supreme height, God, the kindling and the fount of the true and the good?—whom no one beholds save in Christ. He is the light of truth, the way of life, the strength, mind, hand, and power of the Father, the Sun of equity, the fount of good things, the flower of God. Born of God, the sower of the world, the life of our mortality, and the death of death. He is the master of virtues, and our God, and for our sake a man, who, by clothing himself with us, stripped himself, joining men and God in eternal bond, becoming in both a commerce between them.

When therefore he has darted upon our hearts, as his own, his radiance from heaven, he wipes away the sickly mould of the sluggish body, and renews the habit of the mind; he drains out all that delighted before, in place of chaste pleasure; and wholly, by the Lord's right, he claims our hearts, our mouths, and our times. He wills himself to be thought of, understood, believed, read; he wills himself to be feared and loved. The empty fevers which the toil of the present age stirs up along the path of this lifetime, the faith of the life to come with God abolishes—that faith which casts away the wealth we seem to spurn, not as profane or worthless, but, as far dearer, warns it to be laid up in the heavens, entrusted to Christ God, who has promised more for what is given; that he may repay, with much interest, the present things despised, or rather deposited with himself.

A good debtor without deceit, the guardian shall return the money increased to his creditors; and God shall restore the spurned wealth with much greater interest. Do not, I pray, think me sluggish, perverse, or charge me with impiety—me who am at leisure for him, or zealous and devoted to him, who lay up all things in him. How can piety be absent from a Christian? For it is a mutual proof: to be a Christian is the proof of piety, and the proof of the impious is not to be subject to Christ. When we learn to hold this piety, can I fail to display it toward you—that is, toward my father—to whom God willed that I owe all sacred rights and dear names? To you I owe my training, my dignity, my letters, the honour of my eloquence, of the toga, of my reputation; advanced, exalted, instructed by you, I owe it, O patron, teacher, father.

But you reproach me that I dwell so long remote, and in pious emotion you are angry. This is either profitable, or necessary, or pleasing: whichever of these it shall be, it is pardonable. Forgive one who loves you, if I do what is expedient; rejoice, if I live as I please. You upbraid me, moved by holy complaints in your fatherly devotion, that for a whole three years' span I am absent from my native lands, and that, with wandering errors, I have chosen another world, forgetful of the cherished fellowship of your life once cultivated. I embrace these revered impulses with a son's heart, and I count, with my affections unharmed, an anger that should be welcomed. But I would rather you ask my return from him from whom it can be granted. Shall I believe myself to be recalled to you, when you pour out barren prayers, not to divine things, suppliant to the Castalian Muses, while the godhead is turned away? Not by these divinities will you bring me back to you and to my homeland.

What is given (you call upon the Muses, deaf names without godhead, and ask of nothing) the light breeze shall carry off into nothing; the windy storms snatch away these vain vows, which, not sent to God, cling among the empty clouds, and do not penetrate the starry hall of the King above. If you have any care for my return, look upon him, and pray to him—who shakes with thunder the fiery summits of the highest heaven, who flashes with triple-forked fire and mingles no empty murmurings, and who lavishes upon the crops suns enough from heaven, and showers; who, above all that is, or wholly within all things, everywhere poured into all things, Christ, governs all; who holds and moves minds, who disposes our times and places; and if he should establish things contrary to our wishes, he must be turned by prayer toward those things which we will.

Why do you accuse me? If the act which I perform displeases you, while God is the doer, the Author is first to blame, if it be lawful—he who is pleased either to form my thoughts or to change them. For if you recall what my former state was, which is known to you, I shall confess of my own accord that I am not now under that time in which I was, when I was not held perverse—and yet I was perverse, seeing through the darkness of falsehood, foolish while wise in God's eyes, and living on the fodder of death. The more it is right that I be pardoned, since from this it is the more readily granted to be recognised that I am made new by the most high Father, in that what is done is not done after my own manner; I do not think that, having confessed these things, I should be said to be marked for an error of a mind changed for the worse, since I have professed of my own accord that I changed my former life not by my own mind.

A new mind, I confess, has seized me, a mind once not my own, but now mine by God as its author—who, if he has seen in my action or talent anything worthy of his service, the first thanks shall be yours, to you the glory due shall fall, by whose precepts has been brought forth what Christ might love. Wherefore you should rather rejoice than complain that your own Paulinus—sprung from your zeal and manners, you whom he does not deny to be his parent, not even now, when you believe him perverse—that my counsels have been so changed that I have deserved to become Christ's, while I am Ausonius's; he shall bring his own rewards to your praise, and shall first offer you the fruit from your own tree. Whence I pray you think better things, and do not lose the greatest rewards, by detesting good things sprung from your own springs.

For my mind is not a wandering one, nor is mine the fugitive life of men who share in society—that life which, as you write, the rider of Pegasus lived in the Lycian caves; although many, with a divine power working, dwell in pathless places, as renowned sages once did for their studies and their Muses: even as now too those who have taken Christ into chaste minds frequently betake themselves to such places—not poor in mind, nor reading from wildness that they should dwell in desert places, but, turned toward the lofty stars and gazing upon God, intent to discern the depths of the true; freed from vain cares, they love leisure; and they shrink from the din of the forum, and the tumults of affairs, and all business hostile to divine gifts—both by Christ's commands and by love of salvation.

By hope and faith they follow God for the promised reward, which the sure Author shall render to those who do not despair, provided only that present things do not conquer them with empty matters; let one spurn what he sees, that he may merit what he does not see, his enkindled sense penetrating the secret heavenly things. For perishable things lie open to our sight, while eternal things are denied it; and now by hope we follow what we see with the mind, spurning the various spectacles of things' shapes, and the bodily things that evilly solicit our sight as good. Yet this resolve seemed to have settled upon those for whom the whole light of the true and the good has now lain open—the eternity of the world to come, and the emptiness of the present. But for me, who have not the same glory, why should the fame be the same?

My faith is equal to my vow, but for me, dwelling now in pleasant spots and a flattering wealthy shore's tract, whence comes this so hasty envy of places? Would that just envy might begin to carp at me—under the name of Christ, reproaches shall please. A mind made firm by the godhead does not suffer tender shame, and here, with Christ as my judge, the praise that is despised returns to me. Do not therefore, venerable parent, reproach me as one ill-changed by these pursuits, nor carp at me either on account of my wife, or for a fault of mind: my mind is not the anxious one of Bellerophon, nor is my wife a Tanaquil to me, but a Lucretia. Nor have I now (as you wish) forgetfulness of my native heaven—I who look up to the supreme Father; he who worships him alone, he is truly mindful of heaven.

Believe then, father, that we are neither forgetful of heaven, nor live destitute of mind, and that we pass our days in human places. The very pursuits of the godly bear witness to the manners of men; for an impious race could not have come to know the most high God. There may be many of places, many of men's pursuits, untilled, devoid of laws—but what region lacks a rustic custom? Or what harm does another's wickedness do to honourable men? Why do you cast at me the vast forest-passes of Vasconia and the snowy lodgings of the Pyrenees, as though, fixed on the very threshold of the Spanish region, I were to spend my days there, and there were no place for me anywhere, in country or city, where rich Spain lies open to the world's edge, gazing upon the suns sunk in the sea? But suppose it were my lot to have dwelt on the brigands' ridges:

I did not grow stiff in a barbarian household, changed into those very settlers among whom I had a fellowship of wildness. A pure mind does not receive evil, nor do sprinkled stains cling to its light fibres: so in the Vasconian forest-pass, whoever leads a life pure of crime among the wicked draws no contagions of manners from an inhuman host. But why should there be reproach to me from that name—I who dwell, as I have dwelt, in regions joined to proud cities, and most thronged with the glad cultivations of men? And even if my life had been on Vasconian shores: why should not the barbarous race, formed rather after my manner, lay aside its savage rites, migrating into ours?

For in that you set my dwellings among the remote towns of the turned-away Iberians, and in your verse choose out deserted towns, and reproach me with mountainous Calagurris and Bilbilis hanging upon sharp crags, and the hill of low-lying Ilerda—as though I dwell here, an exile from home and city, outside the roofs and roads of men—do you believe these to be the riches of the Iberian land, ignorant of the Spanish world, where that burdened Atlas stood firm beneath the weight of the pole, whose furthest portion is now a mountain and the boundary-mark of the earth, which with its lofty peak walls off the two-sea'd Calpe? To this land Bilbilis only, Calagurris, Ilerda is reckoned—the land to which belongs Caesar-Augusta, to which pleasant Barcino, and Tarraco, looking down upon the sea with its distinguished headland.

Why should I number the distinguished cities, in lands and walls, where happy Spain stretches toward a twin sea—where the Baetis swells the Ocean, and the Hiberus the Tyrrhenian, and fills the broad partings of the distant sea, setting in its own world a boundary at the world's edge? Or for you, my illustrious lord—if you have a mind to write of the region where you dwell—would it please you to keep silent about gleaming Burdigala, and rather to describe the pitch-dark Boii? And while you lavish your leisure on the Marojalic warm-baths, and grant yourself to live among shady groves, glad in your spots and tending wondrous dwellings with their roofs—do you inhabit blackened huts and hovels woven of thatch, deserts worthy of the skin-clad Bigerri? And you, who as consul despise the proud walls of your own Rome—do you scorn the sandy Vasates?

Or, because for you a fertile countryside grows green in Pictonic fields, shall I complain that Rauranum has carried hither the Ausonian curule chairs, and that the consular robe grows soiled with old rags?—the robe which nevertheless gleams venerable in the august city of Quirinus, long-lasting amid the Caesarean palm-embroidered robes with an equal title, on its worn gold, retaining the flourishing honour of its long-lived merit. Or, when you are detained at the summit of a Lucanian estate, dwelling on gables that rival Romulus's roofs, the place affording the theme (which marks the nearest spots), are you said to spend your days in the Condatine village? Let many things lie open to jokes; let it also be allowed to sport with fictions.

But to strike one's heavy tooth amid a soothing tongue, to sport with burning blandishments, and to ferment ill-sweet jests with the vinegar of biting satire, is often becoming to poets, but never to parents. For faith and piety demand that what fame, weaving evils, insinuates into chaste ears, the father's good and devoted mind should not allow to be fastened or to cling fixed in the heart—as the wicked crowd does with crooked rumour. To bend one's manners that were held before is not always—but to bend one's life is a crime: for it is to one's praise to change for the better. When you hear that I am changed, inquire into the zeal and the duty. If the right is changed for the crooked, the religious for the profane, the frugal for luxury, the honourable for the base; if I act sluggish, idle, obscure—then pity your comrade in the evils of one turned to the perverse:

—though anger may stir up the kindly parent, that he may restore his fallen friend to upright manners, and by grave admonition repair him to better things. But if perchance you hear likewise what I read and what I follow—that I have vowed my heart to the godly God, following the venerable rule of Christ with docile credulity, and being persuaded by God's admonitions that eternal rewards are prepared for mortal man, bought at the cost of present losses—I do not think that this has so displeased a sound-minded parent that he should believe it an error of mind, thus to live for Christ as Christ has ordained. This delights me, nor do I repent of this 'error.' That I be foolish to those who follow other things, I care nothing, so long as my judgment be wise to the eternal King. Brief is whatever man is, like a thing of a sick body, of a fading time, and without Christ but dust and shadow.

What he approves or condemns is worth just so much as the judge himself is worth. He himself passes away, and his own error goes as his companion, and, dying with its judge, the verdict passes on. But unless, while the present time is given, our anxious care be to live according to the precept of the Lord Christ, too late shall be the complaint for the man stripped of his members—while he feared the light revilings of the human tongue, that he did not fear the grave wraths of the divine Judge, whom—seated upon the throne and at the right hand of the eternal Father, set over all as King, and to come as the years glide by, that he may judge all the nations with an equalised examination, and render to each his rewards according to his various deeds—I do indeed believe; and, fearing, I labour with hastening zeal, that, if it be granted me anywise, I may be loosed from crime rather than first by death.

Against his coming my heart, believing with sickly fibres, trembles, and my soul throbs—now wary of the future, fore-fearing lest, bound with sickly cares for the body, and heavy with the burdens of things, if perchance the vast trumpet should peal through the unbarred heaven, it might not be able to lift itself up on light wings into the airs to meet the King, flying among the honoured thousands of the saints in heaven—those who, light through the void and not fettered with the world's shackle, shall lift their feet with easy effort into the lofty stars, and, borne by tender clouds, shall go through the heavens, that they may venerate the heavenly King in mid-air, and join their bright bands to the adored Christ.

This is my fear, this my toil: that the last day may seize me, lulled in its black shadows, caught in barren idleness, spending wasted hours on empty cares. For what shall I do, if, while I doze over my sluggish vows, Christ should flash upon me, sent forth from His heavenly citadel, and I, dazzled by the sudden beams of the Lord coming with the heavens thrown open, confounded by the in-rushing light, should seek the dark and dismal refuges of night? Lest either distrust of the truth, or love of the present life, or the pleasure of things, or the toil of cares should beget this in me, I have resolved to forestall such mishaps by my purpose, and to make an end of cares while life yet remains; and, having committed to God the things to come in the ages, to await grim death with an untroubled heart. If this pleases you, congratulate your friend on his rich hope.

But if it is otherwise, leave me only to be approved by Christ. POEM XI. PAULINUS TO AUSONIUS. He answers Ausonius's second letter with the following song. You recall that the silence of my tongue endures unbroken, while you yourself are never silent; you reproach me for the sloth that delights in hiding-places, and on top of that you add the charge of friendship neglected; you cast in my teeth a wife to be feared, and hurl a harsh verse into my very inwards. Spare me, I pray, from tearing your own friend, and do not wish to mix bitterness with fatherly words, as wormwood with honey. My care has always been, and remains, to honor you with every dutiful service, and to regard you with faithful affection. Never has your favor been stained for me by even a slight blemish; I have always feared to wound you even by my look, and to do you injury by an unguarded expression.

And whenever I drew near to you in reverence, I composed my face the more cautiously, and shaped my brow with a glad look, lest any false suspicion should read into the holy father a cloud drawn even from a silent heart. By this example my house has honored and still honors you, and so great is our accord in your love, as in worshiping Christ with a mind knit together. What envy, I ask, has overspread your heart against your own? By what rumor has fickle report broken in upon your devout ears and driven your mind, and against a faith proven by ancient love opened new wounds, that an ill-counseling slander might wound the gentle father through his children? But my mind, conscious of no feigned simplicity, nor the love of a guileless father liable to blame, rejects all that is undeserved, and will not bear to be reproached with a false charge;

indeed the innocent is the more grievously violated by an unjust wound, being as tender to offense as he is free from guilt. You complain that I have shaken off the yoke by which I was joined to you in learned studies. I do not even claim to have borne this yoke: for equals come under the yoke; no one couples the strong with the weak; nor are the reins harmonious, if the measure of those forced together be unequal. If you yoke a calf to a bull, or a horse to a wild ass; if you compare coots with swans, and the nightingale with the screech-owl; hazels with chestnuts, or match the wayfaring-tree with the cypress, then set me beside you: hardly could Cicero and Virgil bear an equal yoke with you; if I am joined to you by love, this alone shall I dare to boast myself your yoke-fellow;

whereby a small thing in love contends with great reins as partner: sweet friendship in an eternal covenant with you, and ever balanced by equal laws of returning love. This yoke upon our neck no sinister tale unbinds, nor has long absence in distant lands sundered it. Nor shall it destroy it, though I be dragged off to the whole earth's end, or by length of time. Never shall I live divided in soul; sooner shall life itself depart from my body than your face from my heart. Through all the age that is given and appointed to mortals, so long as I am held shut within the body, by whatever region I am parted, neither far off in space nor removed from sight, I shall hold you grafted in my inmost being, I shall see you with my heart, embrace you with a devout mind, everywhere present to me.

And when, loosed from the prison of the body, I have flown forth from earth, in whatever heaven our common Father shall place me, there too I shall bear you in my soul. Nor shall the same end that frees me from my body free me also from love of you. For the mind, surviving the fallen limbs, endures from its heavenly stock, and must needs hold its senses and affections together, even as it holds its own life; and as it cannot die, so neither can it forget, living forever and ever mindful.

Glorious Confessor, Felix by merits and by name, a soul mighty in piety, a soul that dwells in highest heaven, yet no less a power proven throughout all the earth: you who, confessing the Lord Christ with steadfast voice, by despising savage tortures earned to escape their penalties, and, bidden of your own will to render to Christ through every torment your devoted soul, your limbs loosed, you left your body empty to the raging executioners, borne without bloodshed into heavenly honor, a martyr. O father, O lord, grant to your servants, unworthy though they be, that at last, while we drag out this life in our frail body, in the longed-for seats and in the hall where you rest, we may be allowed to celebrate this day, to pay our devout vows in your presence, and rejoicing to rejoice amid the throng.

Let it now suffice, I pray, that for our deserved impiety we have borne this penalty—for as many years now as we have lived without you, far from your seat, alas! though not removed in mind. Now take counsel for our longings, wearied by measureless time: now at last, late though it be, mindful of your own, have mercy: and through the world, which sets us far off from you across the plain of the great sea, open easy ways through the hostile things, ground down, that delay us: and, if an envious foe stands in the way of those hastening to you, push aside the bars set against us, stronger than adversities, and speed our friendly course. Or, if a journey by land please, be a companion to your own upon the safe road;