After referring sympathetically to Arno’s complaints that his life has been a very unquiet one of late, by reason of much travelling, Alcuin continues:—
“There is one journey upon which I wish that you would enter. Would that I could see you praying in the venerable temple of blessed Martin our protector, that thy supplication and ours might restore my strength, that by Christ’s mercy the pious consolation of love might advance us both on the way of perpetual beatitude. How this may come about, let your providence consider. If the opportunity of the present year does not grant to us our will, by reason of the hindrance of affairs, may we meet in quiet times and at a quiet season, after Easter of next year, at St. Amand[255]. The frequent infirmity of my poor little body would make a long journey very fatiguing to me in the storms of winter.”
Arno could himself write a genial and affectionate letter. One of his letters to the Cuckoo[256] has been preserved:—
Ep. 287.
“Kartula dic: Cuculus valeat per saecula nostra. To the very dear bird the Cuckoo the Eagle sends greeting.
“Be mindful of thyself and of me. Do what I have enjoined, accomplish what you have promised. Be gentle and true to our father [Alcuin], obedient and devoted to God. Love Him who has raised thee from the mire and set thee to stand before princes. Stand like a man against your adversary; go higher, never lower; advance, never fall back....
“I have dipped my pen in love to write this letter. Rise, rise, most pleasing bird. The winter is passing away; the rains have gone; the flowers are showing on the earth; the time of song has come. Let your friends—that is, the angelic dignities—hear your voice. Your voice is sweet to them, may your appearance be fair in the eyes of the Lord thy God, who desires your presence.”
The Cuckoo’s enemy, against whom he was to fight manfully, was drink. He was evidently a very sweet and sympathetic singer at the frequent feasts,[257] and was not sufficiently careful in respect of strong drink. Alcuin’s Carmen 277 mourns in forty-eight lines the absence of the Cuckoo, gone they did not know where. Some of the lines are significant: “Ah me! if Bacchus has sunk him in that pestiferous vortex!” And again: “Alas! that impious Bacchus, I suppose, is entertaining him, Bacchus who desires to subvert all hearts. Weep for the Cuckoo, weep all for the Cuckoo. He left us in triumph, in tears he will return. Would that we had the Cuckoo, even in tears; for then with the Cuckoo we could weep.”
Though himself a judge of wine, with a decided preference for good and ripe wine, Alcuin was a determined advocate for strict temperance. Total abstinence was not his idea of temperance. Of another temptation of the physical senses he says surprisingly little; indeed, he hardly ever refers to it. In Carmen 260, To his brothers of York, a poem with a charming description of spring in its opening verses, he gives to the younger brethren a very direct warning on both of these physical temptations[258]:—