Yet it must not be forgotten that the Heri mundus exultavit (St. Stephen’s Day) and the Veni, Creator Spiritus, Spiritus Recreator, are both his. Nor must it escape notice that Dr. Neale’s Mediaeval Hymns contains eleven versions of Adam of St. Victor; while Dr. Washburn, Chancellor Benedict, and other translators have quite made the old schoolman’s “sequences” and “proses” familiar to the most careless eye. Recently also we have the three volumes of Mr. Digby S. Wrangham (London, 1881) in which our poet is translated entire, the Latin and English being placed upon opposite pages. He has attained such an eminence as Drummond of Hawthornden, who has come back to us because he knew Ben Jonson and had kept and stratified the spirit of his age.
To me the man is always fascinating, always suggestive. He appears to challenge the best that we moderns can do. His very terseness is a defiance. And here, in this strange symmetry, I fancy that I see the alertness and skill of that wise insect which takes hold with her hands in kings’ palaces. The web of this precise and unvarying artisan often sparkles with the morning dew of a pure devotion. The lines and stays and braces and fashioning of these illustrious verses are as accurate as the spider’s spinning. I look up toward the light and, yonder, upon some Corinthian capital of the song of songs—or over there in a corner of the gate called Beautiful through which Ezekiel walks—or again, high amid the wisdom of that Solomon’s Porch of the Apocalypse where stands the serene John—there I see how Adam of St. Victor has stretched his web. And if, now and then, some dead fly of an obscure allusion, or some desiccated bit of monasticism, offends the sight, I strive to think only of the art that has spread the fabric—and God’s glorious sunshine brightens, upon His own temple, His little creature’s toil!
VERBUM DEI, DEO NATUM.
He, the Word of God, the fated
Son, unmade and uncreated
Came from heaven to be with men.
John beheld him, touched him truly,
Brought him in this gospel newly
Back to dwell with us again.
Where those early streams were flowing,