Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/265

 DcJ GREEK CHRISTIAN POETRY 247 Desidero te millies, Mi Jesu ; quando venies f Me laetum quando fades, Ut vultu tuo saties f Quo dolore Quo moerore Deprimuntur miseri. Qui abyssis Pro commissis Submergentur inferi. Becordare^ Jesupie^ Quod sum causa tuae viae ; Ne me perdas ilia die. • « « « Lacrymosa dies ilia QuQ resurget exfavill^, Judicandus homo reus ; Huic ergo parce^ Deus I Pie Jesu, Domine, Dona eis requiem. Let any one feel the emotion of these verses and then turn to some piece of classic poetry, a passage from Homer or Virgil, an elegiac couplet or a strophe from Sappho or Pindar or Catullus, and he will realize the difference, and the impossibility of setting the emotion of a mediaeval hymn in a classic metre.^ II. Greek Christian Poetry Christian poetry would naturally be drawn from the narratives of the Old and New Testaments, and the 1 The Veni ianete tpiritiu (Clement, Carmina e Poetis ChrU- Hants, p. 404) U an example of how much there is outside the lines, yet carried or suggested by the hjrmn.