Next we turn to a piece by the persecuted and interesting Gottschalk, written in the latter part of the ninth century. A young lad has asked for a poem. But how can he sing, the exiled and imprisoned monk who might rather weep as the Jews by the waters of Babylon?[304] yet he will sing a hymn to the Trinity, and bewail his piteous lot before the highest pitying Godhead. The verses have a lyric unity of mood, and are touching with their sad refrain. Their rhyme, if not quite pure, is abundant and catching, and their nearest metrical affinity would be a trochaic dimeter.
“1. Ut quid iubes, pusiole,
quare mandas, filiole,
carmen dulce me cantare,
cum sim longe exul valde
intra mare?
o cur iubes canere?
2. Magis mihi, miserule,
fiere libet, puerule,
plus plorare quam cantare
carmen tale, iubes quale,
amor care,
o cur iubes canere?
3. Mallem scias, pusillule,
ut velles tu, fratercule,
pio corde condolere
mihi atque prona mente
conlugere.
o cur iubes canere?
4. Scis, divine tyruncule,
scis, superne clientule,
hic diu me exulare,
multa die sive nocte
tolerare.
o cur iubes canere?
5. Scis captive plebicule
Israheli cognomine
praeceptum in Babilone
decantare extra longe
fines Iude.
o cur iubes canere?
6. Non potuerunt utique,
nec debuerunt itaque
carmen dulce coram gente
aliene nostri terre
resonare.
o cur iubes canere?
7. Sed quia vis omnimode,
consodalis egregie,
canam patri filioque
simul atque procedente
ex utroque.
hoc cano ultronee.
8. Benedictus es, domine,
pater, nate, paraclite,
deus trine, deus une,
deus summe, deus pie,
deus iuste.
hoc cano spontanee.
9. Exul ego diuscule
hoc in mare sum, domine:
annos nempe duos fere
nosti fore, sed iam iamque
miserere.
hoc rogo humillime.
10. Interim cum pusione
psallam ore, psallam mente,
psallam voce (psallam corde),
psallam die, psallam nocte
carmen dulce
tibi, rex piissime.”[305]
Gottschalk (and for this it is hard to love him) was one of the initiators of the leonine hexameter, in which a syllable in the middle of the line rhymes with the last syllable.
“Septeno Augustas decimo praeeunte Kalendas”
is the opening hexameter in his Epistle to his friend Ratramnus.[306] To what horrid jingle such verses could attain may be seen from some leonine hexameter-pentameters of two or three hundred years later, on the Fall of Troy, beginning:
“Viribus, arte, minis, Danaum clara Troja ruinis,
Annis bis quinis fit rogus atque cinis.”[307]
Hector and Troy, and the dire wiles of the Greeks never left the mediaeval imagination. A poem of the early tenth century, which bade the watchers on Modena’s walls be vigilant, draws its inspiration from that unfading memory, and for us illustrates what iambics might become when accent had replaced quantity. The lines throughout end in a final rhyming a.
“O tu, qui servas armis ista moenia,
Noli dormire, moneo, sed vigila.
Dum Hector vigil extitit in Troia,
Non eam cepit fraudulenta Graecia.”[308]
And from a scarcely later time, for it also is of the tenth century, rise those verses to Roma, that old “Roma aurea et eterna,” and forever “caput mundi,” sung by pilgrim bands as their eyes caught the first gleam of tower, church, and ruin:
“O Roma nobilis, orbis et domina,
Cunctarum urbium excellentissima,
Roseo martyrum sanguine rubea,
Albis et virginum liliis candida:
Salutem dicimus tibi per omnia,
Te benedicimus: salve per secula.”[309]