“Par tibi, Roma, nihil, cum sis prope tota ruina;
Quam magni fueris integra fracta doces.
Longa tuos fastus aetas destruxit, et arces
Caesaris et superum templa palude jacent.
Ille labor, labor ille ruit quem dirus Araxes
Et stantem tremuit et cecidisse dolet;
Quem gladii regum, quem provida cura senatus,
Quem superi rerum constituere caput;
Quem magis optavit cum crimine solus habere
Caesar, quam socius et pius esse socer,
Qui, crescens studiis tribus, hostes, crimen, amicos
Vi domuit, secuit legibus, emit ope;
In quem, dum fieret, vigilavit cura priorum:
Juvit opus pietas hospitis, unda, locus.
Materiem, fabros, expensas axis uterque
Misit, se muris obtulit ipse locus.
Expendere duces thesauros, fata favorem,
Artifices studium, totus et orbis opes.
Urbs cecidit de qua si quicquam dicere dignum
Moliar, hoc potero dicere: Roma fuit.
Non tamen annorum series, non flamma, nec ensis
Ad plenum potuit hoc abolere decus.
Cura hominum potuit tantam componere Romam
Quantam non potuit solvere cura deum.
Confer opes marmorque novum superumque favorem,
Artificum vigilent in nova facta manus,
Non tamen aut fieri par stanti machina muro,
Aut restaurari sola ruina potest.
Tantum restat adhuc, tantum ruit, ut neque pars stans
Aequari possit, diruta nec refici.
Hic superum formas superi mirantur et ipsi,
Et cupiunt fictis vultibus esse pares.
Non potuit natura deos hoc ore creare
Quo miranda deum signa creavit homo.
Vultus adest his numinibus, potiusque coluntur
Artificum studio quam deitate sua.
Urbs felix, si vel dominis urbs illa careret,
Vel dominis esset turpe carere fide.”[295]
The elegiac metre was used by Abaelard in his didactic poem to his son Astralabius,[296] and by John of Salisbury in his Entheticus. The hexameter also was a favourite measure, used, for instance, by Alanus of Lille in the Anticlaudianus, perhaps the noblest of mediaeval narrative or allegorical poems in Latin.[297] Another excellent composition in hexameter was the Alexandreis of Walter, born, like Alanus, apparently at Lille, but commonly called of Chatillon. As poets and as classical scholars, these two men were worthy contemporaries. Walter’s poem follows, or rather enlarges upon the Life of Alexander by Quintus Curtius.[298] He is said to have written it on the challenge of Matthew of Vendome, him of the Ars versificatoria. The Ligurinus of a certain Cistercian Gunther is still another good example of a long narrative poem in hexameters. It sets forth the career of Frederick Barbarossa, and was written shortly after the opening of the thirteenth century. Its author, like Walter and Alanus, shows himself widely read in the Classics.[299]
The sapphic was a third not infrequently attempted metre, of which the De planctu naturae of Alanus contains examples. This work was composed in the form of the De consolatione philosophiae of Boëthius, where lyrics alternate with prose. The general topic was Nature’s complaint over man’s disobedience to her laws. The author apostrophizes her in the following sapphics:
“O Dei proles, genitrixque rerum,
Vinculum mundi, stabilisque nexus,
Gemma terrenis, speculum caducis,
Lucifer orbis.
Pax, amor, virtus, regimen, potestas,
Ordo, lex, finis, via, dux, origo,
Vita, lux, splendor, species, figura
Regula mundi.
Quae tuis mundum moderas habenis,
Cuncta concordi stabilita nodo
Nectis et pacis glutino maritas
Coelica terris.
Quae noys (νοῦς) plures recolens ideas
Singulas rerum species monetans,
Res togas formis, chlamidemque formae
Pollice formas.
Cui favet coelum, famulatur aer,
Quam colit Tellus, veneratur unda,
Cui velut mundi dominae tributum
Singula solvunt.
Quae diem nocti vicibus catenans
Cereum solis tribuis diei,
Lucido lunae speculo soporans
Nubila noctis.
Quae polum stellis variis inauras,
Aetheris nostri solium serenans
Siderum gemmis, varioque coelum
Milite complens.
Quae novis coeli faciem figuris
Protheans mutas aridumque vulgus
Aeris nostri regione donans,
Legeque stringis.
Cujus ad nutum juvenescit orbis,
Silva crispatur folii capillo,
Et tua florum tunicata veste,
Terra superbit.
Quae minas ponti sepelis, et auges,
Syncopans cursum pelagi furori
Ne soli tractum tumulare possit
Aequoris aestus.”[300]
Practically all of our examples have been taken from works composed in the twelfth century, and in the land comprised under the name of France. The pre-excellence of this period will likewise appear in accentual rhyming Latin poetry, which was more spontaneous and living than its loftily descended relative.
II
The academic vogue of metre in the early Middle Ages did not prevent the growth of more natural poetry. The Irish had their Gaelic poems; people of Teutonic speech had their rough verse based on alliteration and the count of the strong syllables. The Romance tongues emerging from the common Latin were as yet poetically untried. But in the proper Latin, which had become as unquantitative and accentual as any of its vulgar forms, there was a tonic poetry that was no longer unequipped with rhyme.
Three rhythmic elements made up this natural mode of Latin versification: the succession of accented and unaccented syllables; the number of syllables in a line; and that regularly recurring sameness of sound which is called rhyme. The source of the first of these seems obvious. Accent having driven quantity from speech, came to supersede it in verse, with the accented syllable taking the place of the long syllable and the unaccented the place of the short. In the Carolingian period accentual verse followed the old metrical forms, with this exception: the metrical principle that one long is equivalent to two shorts was not adopted. Consequently the number of syllables in the successive lines of an accentual strophe would remain the same, where in the metrical antecedent they might have varied. This is also sufficient to account for the second element, the observance of regularity in the number of syllables. For this regularity seems to follow upon the acceptance of the principle that in rhythmic verse an accented syllable is not equal to two unaccented ones. The query might perhaps be made why this Latin accentual verse did not take up the principle of regularity in the number of strong syllables in a line, like Old High German poetry for example, where the number of unaccented syllables, within reasonable limits, is indifferent. A ready answer is that these Latin verses were made by people of Latin speech who had been acquainted with metrical forms of poetry, in which the number of syllables might vary, but was never indifferent; for the metrical rule was rigid that one long was equivalent to two short; and to no more and no less. Hence the short syllables were as fixed in number as the long.[301]
The origin of the third element, rhyme, is in dispute. In some instances it may have passed into Greek and Latin verses from Syrian hymns.[302] But on the other hand it had long been an occasional element in Greek and Latin rhetorical prose. Probably rhyme in Latin accentual verse had no specific origin. It gradually became the sharpening, defining element of such verse. Accentual Latin lent itself so naturally to rhyme, that had not rhyme become a fixed part of this verse, there indeed would have been a fact to explain.
These, then, were the elements: accent, number of syllables, and rhyme. Most interesting is the development of verse-forms. Rhythmic Latin poetry came through the substitution of accent for quantity, and probably had many prototypes in the old jingles of Roman soldiers and provincials, which so far as known were accentual, rather than metrical. Christian accentual poetry retained those simple forms of iambic and trochaic verse which most readily submitted to the change from metre to accent, or perhaps one should say, had for centuries offered themselves as natural forms of accentual verse. Apparently the change from metre to accent within the old forms gradually took place between the sixth and the tenth centuries. During this period there was slight advance in the evolution of new verses; nor was the period creative in other respects, as we have seen. But thereafter, as the mediaeval centuries advanced from the basis of a mastered patristic and antique heritage, and began to create, there followed an admirable evolution of verse-forms: in some instances apparently issuing from the old metrico-accentual forms, and in others developing independently by virtue of the faculty of song meeting the need of singing.