singing verses without prosodial measure, their vehement and rapid rhyme answering for every thing. And yet this learned barbarism, borrowed from the seventh century, from a poetry in ruins, gives life to the ardent flame and the tragic sorrow it expresses. It is a deep cry of anguish from the innermost depths of a stricken people's heart.
We hear the divine and child-like victim invoked in his feebleness by a vanquished nation, and appealed to in his shivering nakedness (et friges et taces) by the oppressed in tears, and these cries form a sad though sublime harmony. The unknown ecclesiastical minstrel—for the poetry is anonymous—continues:
2.
O nefas! O crimen!
Mors transit limen!
O Parvule delicate!
Patriam defende!
Jam victima sumus,
Et pulvis et fumus.
Patriam!
Patriam!
Patriam defende!
O injustice! O crime! Death advances! O tender Infant! defend our country. Already are we victims, naught but smoke and dust. Our country, etc., etc.
3.
Tu nudus hic jaces
Et friges et taces!
O Parvule delicate!
Patriam defende!
Minusculum pectus,
Duriusculus lectus!
Nihilominus telo
Pugnabis e cœlo!
Patriam!
Patriam!
Patriam defende!
All naked as we see thee, and cold and silent! O tender Infant! defend our country. Delicate is thy breast. Hard is thy couch! And yet, from heaven on high, wilt thou combat for us! Our country, etc., etc.
This people's poet and clever Latinist is liberal of his diminutives, minusculum, duriusculus, and displays, withal, a curious affectation of rhyming richness, Turcam, furcam; lectus, pectus; laudi, audi; magnus, agnus. And yet there is deep emotion and profound lyric agitation compressed into the shortest possible strophes, all vigorously concise and eloquently expressive. We omit several beautiful verses:
4.