Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/302

 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. 80 pale and the heavens so far away. The book ends with the lines : — Livida quos hostis paradiaa depulit ira^ Fortior antiquae reddat tua gratia sedi. The fourth book, on the Flood, is hardly connected with the preceding ones ; the story is told with spirit, but with much symbolism. The Ark naturally is the Church ; the ravens remaining without to tear the dead are the Jews; and the rainbow is the type of Christ. In the fifth book, the poet treats freely and symbolically the story of the Exodus. IV. The Transition to Medicevcd Latin Poetry The early Christian Latin poets, as inheritors of antique culture, used antique metres and made such use of the forms of antique poetry as their own facul- ties and the novelty of their subjects permitted. Par gan commonplace and reminiscence survived in their poems. With the approach of the Middle Ages, the antique metres decayed or were transformed to accent- ual rhythms; the appreciation of antique forms of poetry passed away; the antique pagan phrases no longer flowed so naturally and abundantly. As has been seen. Christian Latin poets of the fourth and fifth centuries chose the simpler classical metres. A few accentual hymns were written even then, and a tendency to preserve the force of accent in metrical verse had already appeared. After the fifth century, rhymes became more frequent. Then, very gradually, accent took the place of quantity as the determinant of the rhythm, and with this change rhymes devel-