Charles Cooper Nott

“ That day, a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers!—Zephaniah, i. 15, 16.
1.
DAY of vengeance, without morrow!
Earth sall end in flame and sorrow,
As from Saint and Seer we borrow.
2.
Ah! what terror is impending,
When the Judge is seen descending,
And each secret veil is rending. ”

“ The Mater Speciosa is a Christmas hymn, and sings the overflowing joy of Mary at the cradle of the new-born Saviour. The Mater Dolorosa is a Good Friday hymn, and sings the piercing agony of Mary at the cross of her divine human Son. They breathe the same love to Christ, and the burning desire to become identified with Mary by sympathy in the intensity of her joy as in the intensity of her grief. ”

“ Its measure could not be more artless, nor its stanzas more simple. The august language in which it is clothed, it has bent into the form of rhyme, and this rhyme is of a kind which is said to be wanting in dignity, and better adapted to comic than to elevated verse. Yet it commands the homage of the Englishman, the German, the Italian, and the modern Greek; and even possesses so strange a gift of fascination, a gift in which no other composition equals and but one other approaches it, that the very found of its words will allure him who is ignorant of their meaning. ”

“ Virgin, have through thee protection
⁠In the solemn Judgment Day.
10.
Let me by the Cross be warded,
By the death of Christ be guarded,
⁠Nourished by divine supplies.
When the body death hath riven,
Grant that to the foul be given
⁠Glories bright of Paradise. ”

“ Make my heart with love unceafing
Burn toward Christ the Lord, that pleasing
⁠I may be to Him above.
6.
Holy mother, this be granted,
That the slain one's wounds be planted
⁠Firmly in my heart to bide. ”

“ My God, my Father, and my Friend:
Do not forsake me in my end!
18.
Well may they curse their second breath
Who rise to a reviving death:
Thou great Creator of mankind,
Let guilty man compassion find! ”

“ Wondrous sound the Trumpet flingeth,
Through earth's sepulchres it ringeth,
All before the throne it bringeth!
4.
Death is struck, and nature quaking,
All creation is awaking,
To its Judge an answer making! ”

“ While perceiving, scarce believing,
we bring them perilously near to the absurd.
In a word, free translations do not catch the delicate pathos of the Stabat Mater, and are not echoes of its melody. I have hitherto had an occasion to say that a translator may well make three translations of a poem; one to portray its structure, that is, its measure, melody, movement and rhyme ”

“ In our English tongue the task of rendering the Latin into verse of the same measure is more difficult, and some of our translators have sought to reproduce the form, and others to preserve the power of the original. The reader of Scott will remember with what strength a few stanzas burst on us in the first reading of "The Lay." In form and meaning they hardly claim the name of a translation, yet they have caught the spirit of the hymn with a vividness that nothing in our language equals. ”

“ Virgin, peerless of condition,
Be not wroth with my petition,
⁠Let me clasp thy little Son;
Let me bear that child so glorious,
Him, whose birth, o'er death victorious,
⁠Willed that life for man was won. ”

“ IN the year 997, "whilst the priesthood struggled to regain through their anathemas the property that had been taken from them by violence, a young man, who knew neither to threaten nor to lie, nor to inspire others with fear, succeeded to the royal dignity which his father had usurped. It was Robert, only son of Hugh Capet."—Sismondi, Hist. Français.
This King, "there is no good reason to doubt" (Konigsfeld) , was the author of the Veni Sancte Spiritus, a hymn that the best living authority regards as all the loveliest of all the hymns in the whole circle of Latin sacred poetry."—Trench. ”

“ And grant us, Lord, who cry to Thee,
And hold the Faith in unity,
Thy precious gifts of charity.
10.
That we may live in holiness,
And find in death our happiness,
And dwell with Thee in lasting bliss! ”

“ Who could witness without weeping
Such a flood of sorrow sweeping
⁠O'er the stricken mother's breast?
Who contemplate without being
Moved to kindred grief by feeing
⁠Son and mother thus oppressed? ”

“ From the dust, I pray Thee, hear me:
When my end shall come, be near me;
Let Thy grace sustain and cheer me.
18.
Ah, that day, that day of weeping,
When, no more in ashes sleeping,
Man shall rise and stand before Thee! ”

“ In his preface the monk avows the belief that nothing but the special inspiration of the Spirit of God enabled him to employ it through so long a poem. After recounting its difficulties, and alluding to the faint attempts of the two great versifiers of his day, Hildebert de Lavardin and Wichard of Lyons, he exclaims: "I may then assert, not in ostentation, but with humble confidence, that if I had not received directly from on high the gift of inspiration and intelligence, I had not dared to attempt an enterprise so little accorded to the powers of the human mind." ”

“ Elect on whose triumphal breast
Those holy limbs should find their rest!
5.
On whose dear arms, so widely flung,
The weight of this world's ransom hung:
The price of human kind to pay,
And spoil the Spoiler of his prey. ”

“ Men naturally prefer to trace a venerable and renowned composition to an unexpected authorship, and to find the refinement of letters in those otherwise distinguished; still more, to discover in a great soldier and a great king the doubly refined gift of sacred poetry. ”

“ And martyrdom hath roses
⁠Upon that heavenly ground;
And white and virgin lilies
⁠For virgin-souls abound.
There grief is turned to pleasure—
⁠Such pleasure as below
No human voice can utter,
⁠No human heart can know ”

“ Bowed to earth, I strive in prayer;
Heart like cinders, see, I bear;
Its last throbbing be Thy care!
18.
Ah! That Day of burning tears,
When from ashes reappears
Man all guilt, his doom to bear—
Spare him, God! in mercy, spare! ”

“ The music of the Dies Iræ is as old as the hymn, if not older; and with those who are familiar with both, they are inseparably connected in thought. To satisfy the exactions of such minds, the cadences must be the same."
In this endeavor the author has so well succeeded, that when this version is compared stanza by stanza with the original, it will be found to be in the same trochaic measure, in the same difficult double rhyme, in stanzas of the same triplicate construction, and, with fewest errors, to be as a translation the most literal and just that has been made. ”

“ And when rebellious they are grown,
Then lay Thy hand and hold 'em down.
Chase from our minds th' infernal foe,
And peace the fruit of love bestow;
And lest our feet should step astray,
Protect and guide us on the way.
Make us eternal truths receive,
And practise all that we believe ”

“ In framing the book the process of selection and rejection was instinctive or intuitive rather than the operation of a well-informed judgment. It was the case of one reaching out for something which he intensely desired to find with the result of finding it. The purpose of the book was what might be termed exposition—to give to American readers an exposition of the subject by placing before them the greatest of the mediæval hymns, and an exposition of each hymn by appending to it its best translation. ”

“ After seven hundred years of darkness, the holy fervor of Bernard re-kindles in it as warmly as when in the warmth of his devotion he believed himself specially inspired by the Most High. In another language, at another time, and among those who can but dimly trace his name in the crumbling record of his works, the Rhyme of the poor monk relives to gladden the hearts of other Christians, loved by such as possess its faith, and treasured by the gentlest and the best of earth. [3]
↑ "Le surnom de Bernard varie en trois manières dans les manuscrits. ”

“ None can endure, yet none can fly.
6.
Ah then, poor soul! what wilt thou say?
And to what patron choose to pray,
When stars themselves shall stagger, and
The most firm foot no more shall stand? ”

“ Dean Trench, in his 'Sacred Latin Poetry,' gave a very beautiful cento of ninety-five lines from the work. From that cento I translated the larger part in the first edition of the present book, following the arrangement of Dean Trench, and not that of Bernard. The great popularity which my translation, however inferior to the original, attained, is evinced by the very numerous hymns compiled from it, which have found their way into modern collections; so that in some shape or other the Cluniac's verses have become, as it were, naturalized among us. ”

“ Israel, according to St. Augustine's rendering, means, He that beholds God; Rachel, according to the unwarrantable mediæval explanation, That beholds the Beginning, i. e, Christ. Thus, the change spoken of is from earth to the Beatific Vision; and has a reference also to the New Name and White Stone of the Apocalypse.
"The second allegory of Leah and Rachel expounds them of the Synagogue and the Church; the third makes them to represent earthly affliction patiently endured "—Mediæval Hymns. 2d Edition. ”

“ When shall sit the Judge unerring,
He'll unfold all here occurring,
No just vengeance then deferring.
7.
What shall I say, that time pending?
Ask what advocate's befriending,
When the just man needs defending? ”

“ John Mason Neale, who published the original Latin with the translation a few days before his death, in August, 1866, thus closing his useful and brilliant hymnological labors.
The Mater Speciosa and the Mater Dolorosa are, apparently, the product of the same genius. They are companion-hymns, and resemble each other like twin sisters. The Mater Dolorosa was evidently suggested by the Scripture scene, as briefly stated by St. John, Stabat juxta crucem mater ejus; and this again, suggested the cradle-hymn as a counterpart. It is a parallelism of contrast which runs from beginning to end. ”

“ A production universally acknowledged to have no superior of its class should be as literally rendered as the structure of the language into which it is translated will admit. Moreover, no translation can be complete which does not conform to the original in its rhythmic quantities. ”

“ Let man, the guilty, tremble,
⁠For Man, the God, shall doom!
II.
The Dies Iræ is undoubtedly the greatest of the mediæval hymns. It stands "majestic and solitary" in the words of Mr. Benedict; its strain is "so clear and deep that its softest tones are heard throughout Christendom," in the words of Mrs. Charles. The zeal of the translator has not cooled, and many translations have been published, and many, unpublished, have been sent to me since the first edition of this work. ”

“ Was that ever-blessed one,
⁠Mother of the Son of God!
Oh! what bitter tears she shed
Whilst before her Jesus bled
⁠'Neath the Father's penal rod!
3.
Who's the man could view unmoved
Christ's sweet mother, whom He loved,
⁠In such dire extremity? ”

“ Some Catholics have also given to it some praises; and surely it merits them, at least by the sentiments of piety which it exhales, and by the zeal with which the author attacks the abuses of his time."
"In holy Rome the only power is gold;
There all is bought—there every thing is sold. ”

“ Then is heard a sound of wonder:
Mighty blasts of trumpet-thunder
Rend the sepulchers asunder.
4.
What can e'er that woe resemble
Where even Death and Nature tremble
As the rising throngs assemble! ”

“ The last two verses were added when the hymn was appropriated to Passion-tide. The ending of Fortunatus is this:
"With fragrance dropping from each bough,
Sweeter than sweetest nectar thou:
Decked with the fruit of peace and praise,
And glorious with Triumphal lays:—
"Hail, Altar! Hail, O Victim! Thee
Decks now Thy Passion's Victory;
Where Life for sinners death endured,
And life by death for man procured."
Chapters (not listed in original) Vexilla Regis. Fortunatus. The Vexilla Regis. Dr. Neale. ”

“ Taking this version all in all, its adherence to the measure of the original, its retention of the double-rhyme, its avoidance of the English participle ending in "ing," its preservation of the ideas and imagery of the original, I doubt whether a better translation will ever be made by a translator of the critical school.
Nevertheless, these things must be borne in mind—that power is the great characteristic of the Dies Iræ; that its power cannot be transferred to English verse by means of the weakest form of English words ”

“ To Leah give, the battle won,
⁠Her Rachel's dearer heart;
To Martha, when the strife is done,
⁠Her Mary's better part.
"The parallel symbol of Martha and Mary is, however, in this sense far more common, and is even found in epitaphs, as in that of Gundreda de Warren, daughter of William the Conqueror:
A Martha to the houseless poor, a Mary in her love ”