He was born in Brittany, to the best of our information. He studied in Paris, and finally entered the walls of St. Victor, never to leave it. It is a very brief record, but it illustrates the monotony and dead sameness of that mediaeval monastic life. The Dark Ages were mud-flats, from which the tide had gone out. And yet I think that Adam of St. Victor had another side to him, which Trench and Neale might well have developed—a power of livelier rhythm than is often suspected. The little stranded fish perchance gambolled a trifle in its small sea-water pool.
The poem which I quote is found in Migne and Gautier. It differs from another sequence upon a similar theme—one which Dr. Neale has translated. It is “The Praise of the Cross.”
This poem, it will be seen, is abrupt, irregular, and altogether inferior, in some features, to the usually finished and elegant diction of its author. For this very reason I have selected it; it exhibits Adam of St. Victor when he dashes off the stanzas without revision, fired by the glow of his theme. Only on this account do I render it, trying merely to carry its dash and spirit into the English version.
Salve, Crux, arbor
Vitae praeclara.
Vexillum Christi,
Thronus et ara.
O Crux, profanis
Terror et ruina,
Tu Christianis