“A patre mittitur, in terris nascitur, Deus de virgine
Humana patitur, docet et moritur, libens pro homine.”
It celebrates Him, sent from the Father, born on the earth, God from a virgin, wearing our mortal shape, teaching and tarrying with us, and atoning for our sins. The best, perhaps, of all his poems is what Trench and March quote:
“Mortis portis fractis, fortis
Fortior vim sustulit,”—
the real original of those splendid lines:
“Now broken are the bars of Death,
And crushed thy sting, Despair!”—
which we find in Bishop Heber’s resurrection hymn, commencing, “God is gone up with a merry noise.” There is a life to these verses which one must understand their author in order to appreciate. They follow, in the best attire that I can give them. They are exultant rather than illustrious. It is the man and not his measures whom we celebrate! Daniel does not think it worth his while to include him at all. Archbishop Trench takes his own text from the Bibliotheca Cluniacense, Paris, 1614: