Chief of these is the first named, though that is but part of a religious poem of three thousand lines, which the author, Bernard of Cluny, named “De Contemptu Mundi” (Concerning Disdain of the World.)
Bernard was of English parentage, though born at Morlaix, a seaport town in the north of France. 574 / 510 The exact date of his birth is unknown, though it was probably about A.D. 1100. He is called Bernard of Cluny because he lived and wrote at that place, a French town on the Grone where he was abbot of a famous monastery, and also to distinguish him from Bernard of Clairvaux.
His great poem is rarely spoken of as a whole, but in three portions, as if each were a complete work. The first is the long exordium, exhausting the pessimistic title (contempt of the world), and passing on to the second, where begins the real “Laus Patriae Coelestis.” This being cut in two, making a third portion, has enriched the Christian world with two of its best hymns, “For Thee, O Dear, Dear Country,” and “Jerusalem the Golden.”
Bernard wrote the medieval or church Latin in its prime of literary refinement, and its accent is so obvious and its rhythm so musical that even one ignorant of the language could pronounce it, and catch its rhymes. The “Contemptu Mundi” begins with these two lines, in a hexameter impossible to copy in translation:
Hora novissima; tempora pessima sunt; Vigilemus!
Ecce minaciter imminet Arbiter, Ille Supremus!
'Tis the last hour; the times are at their worst;
Watch; lo the Judge Supreme stands threat'ning nigh!
Or, as Dr. Neale paraphrases and softens it,—
The World is very evil,