Thou that hast carried
The Saviour of men,
Hadst the best honor
Of royalty, then.
Blessed cross, may there be given,
Through that blood, our way to heaven—
Unto us eternal place
Unto us celestial grace!
Adam’s peculiarities are very marked in this production. He alludes, as you perceive, to the Cross in the air which Constantine took as his sign in which to conquer. He refers to Chosroes, King of Persia, who, after great successes and the conquest of Jerusalem itself, was finally overcome by Heraclius, the Eastern Emperor, about 622-29 A.D.; and he also drags in a piece of mystical imagery about the “four-squareness” of the earth, which is hard enough to understand without a key. The key is one with many wards. It includes the “breadth, depth, length, and height” of the love of Christ; it suggests the appearance of the heavenly city of John’s vision; it reminds us of the temple in Ezekiel’s prophecy, and of the account of the actual structure in 1 Kings; it recalls the classical geographers’ notions about the shape of the earth and about the “four quarters,” which we still call east, west, north, south; it finally symbolizes all these things by the four arms of the Cross! Is it any wonder that Adam of St. Victor is a difficult poet to translate, and that his verses are not fitted to be sung?