Therefore we pray to thee, lest we be stayed from thee, by storm infernal.
Quiet the tempest-wrack! Give us the sunshine back for our fair weather!
Lend us clear light again, make the stars bright again where the clouds feather!
Virgin, oh cherish thy friends lest we perish by sickness or anger;
Drive all these ills away, thou whose love stills away thunder’s mad clangor!”
By far the greater part of his hymns are addressed to the Virgin and to the saints, but there are some others—the Paule doctor Egregie, the Paschalis festi gaudium, the Christe sanctorum gloria, and the two powerful judgment hymns, Gravi me terrore and O Quam dira, quam horrenda—which are worthy of note. This Gravi me terrore of the eleventh century ranks with the Apparebit repentina of the seventh century. These, together with the Dies Irae of the fourteenth century, form the great judgment triad of Latin psalmody.
Yet of all the hymns of that or any later time, nothing approaches the beauty of the Ad perennis vitae fontem, of which this Peter Damiani sings. It is born of Augustine’s thoughts and dreams of the heavenly land, and some of its phrases are exquisite beyond the possibility of translation. When Frater Honestus on February 23d, 1072, forever left that convent of Fonte Avellana, whither Dante went upon his last recorded journey, then that noble landscape might preserve these sixty-one lines of Latin verse among the choicest treasures of its dell and grove. This was no lark that sang against the sun with clarion notes calling us to such praise as rings through the ancient morning hymn of Hilary. It was the nightingale of Faenza, sending out those thrilling tones from the midst of the walls which beheld the eager scholar and to which the weary cardinal had returned to die. Upon his fame it is set therefore not like the lark’s song, but the nightingale’s, not as the flashing diamond, but (in Daniel’s very words) “as a precious pearl for our treasury.” Mrs. Charles has rendered it into English with grace and success. Mr. Morgan appends this autograph note to the version in the copy of his book which is in my possession: “N. B.—This hymn was printed without revision. If reprinted the metres will be made equal.” He has not attempted to follow the versification of the original. I know of no other translation except that of R. F. Littledale in Lyra Mystica.
Another beautiful hymn which was suggested by the prose of Augustine, and is ascribed to Peter Damiani by Anselm of Canterbury, who was his younger contemporary, is the Quid tyranne, quid minaris. It is commonly called
THE ANTIDOTE OF ST. AUGUSTINE AGAINST THE TYRANNY OF SIN.
What are threats of thine, O tyrant,