Page:Our Hymns.djvu/29

 THEIE AUTHORS AND ORIGIN.

is freely given in Gerhard s

&quot; ! sacred Head, once wounded.&quot; No. 374. &quot; ! haupt voll blut und wunden.&quot;

BERNARD OF CLUNY.

TWELFTH CENTURY.

THIS talented ecclesiastic must not be confounded with his still more celebrated fellow-countryman and cotemporary, Bernard, the Abbot of Clairvaux. He was born at Morlaix, in Brittany, and is said to have been the child of English parents. We know nothing of the incidents of his life. His poetry is his best

memorial.

&quot; To thee, dear, dear country.&quot; No. 744.

This is Dr. John Mason Neale s translation of part of a Latin poem of 3,000 lines, entitled, &quot; De contemptu mundi.&quot; The translation is given in &quot; The Rhythm of Bernard de Morlaix, Monk of Cluny, on the Celestial. Country, 1862.&quot; The original poem was dedicated to Peter the Venerable, General of the order to which Bernard belonged. Cluny Abbey was the greatest in France, and Peter was at its head from 1122 to 1156.

The poetic form of the piece is strange to the reader, and most difficult to the writer. The hexameter terminates in a tailed rhyme, and it has also a feminine leonine rhyme between the two first clauses, each clause terminating in the same way, e. &amp;lt;j.

&quot;Tune nova gloria || pectora sobrio. || clarificabit : Solvit enigmata || veraque sabbafa || continuabit.&quot;

Although this form is not attractive, yet &quot; no one,&quot; says Trench, &quot; with a sense for the true passion of poetry, even when it mani fests itself in forms the least to his liking, will deny the breath of a real inspiration to the author of these dactylic hexa meters.&quot;

The subject of the poem is the wickedness of man ; and the

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