This writer, born in Brittany of English parents and a contemporary of
St. Bernard, was a monk in the monastery of Cluny under Peter the
Venerable. The verses here given form the opening of his _De Contemptu
Mundi_, a bitter satire about three thousand lines long upon the
corruptions of the time. The passage is described by Neale as 'the most
lovely of mediaeval poems.'
The metre is dactylic hexameter with the leonine and tailed rhyme, each
line being broken up into three parts. This measure is so difficult that
the composer was enabled to master it only, as he believed, by a special
inspiration; but two translators into English, Moultrie and Duffield,
have attempted to reproduce it, as:
Here we have many fears; this is the vale of tears, the land of
sorrow.
Tears are there none at all, in that celestial hall, on life's bright
morrow.
The great English rendering is by Neale in his _Rhythm of Bernard de
Morlaix on the Celestial Country_. From this many favorite hymns have
been drawn.
The subject is the speedy coming of Christ to judge the world and the
joys and glories of the New Jerusalem. Cf. Revelation 21 and 22.
3. terminet: subjunctive of wish. 8. homo deus: the God-man; i.e.
Christ. 10. non breve vivere: subject of retribuetur. 17. Sion: the
church. Babylone: the world. Cf. such passages as Revelation 16. 19. 19.
sobria: sober and impliedly watchful. Cf. 1 Thessalonians 5. 6. 24-29.
With jasper glow thy bulwarks,
Thy streets with emerald blaze;
The sardius and the topaz
Unite in thee their rays;
Thine ageless walls are bonded
With amethyst unpriced;
Thy saints build up its fabric,
And the corner-stone is Christ.
The cross is all thy splendor,
The crucified thy praise;
His laud and benediction
Thy ransomed people raise.
Thou hast no shore, fair ocean;
Thou hast no time, bright day
Dear fountain of refreshment
To pilgrims far away.
--Neale.
26. The heavenly throng compose thy fabric and Christ is thy precious
stone; i.e. each believer is a stone built into the structure of the
heavenly city of which Christ, the 'living stone, elect and precious,'
is the foundation. Cf. 1 Peter 2. 3-6. 29. Thou without shore (i.e.
unbounded in extent), thou without time (i.e. never ceasing to flow),
fountain that art soon a stream. 34.
Beneath thy contemplation
Sink heart and voice oppressed.
--Neale.