Terrena da contemnere;
Amare da coelestia.
It will be observed that while the ideas, and even to some extent the phraseology of the old hymn are retained in the first six verses, their order is so changed as to suggest that we have an original hymn before us, if we do not look closely. But the last verse is altogether different. The old poet prayed that the paschal joy might be made unending through the deliverance of the regenerate from the death eternal. The modern prays that we may share mystically in the death and resurrection of Christ, and learn thereby to set our affections on things above. Similar are his recasts of the Salvete flores Martyrum of Prudentius, and the Ambrosian Jam lucis orto sidere.
Mr. Duffield has left only one completed version of a hymn from the Paris Breviary, and that one whose authorship I am unable to determine. It attracted him as one of the surprisingly few hymns in which the comparison of the Christian life to a warfare, so frequently used by our Lord and the Apostle Paul, is employed as a leading idea. His interest in such hymns no doubt was first awakened by his father’s admirable and popular one:
“Stand up, stand up for Jesus,”
suggested by the dying words of Dudley Tyng. We give both the Latin and his English version:
Pugnate, Christi milites,
Fortes fide resistite:
Immensa promisit Deus
Pio labori praemia.