Page:The seven great hymns of the mediaeval church - 1902.djvu/33

Rh This vere, o difficult that the Englih language is incapable of expreing it, is continued through the three thouand lines of the poem. In his preface the monk avows the belief that nothing but the pecial inpiration of the of  enabled him to employ it through o long a poem. After recounting its difficulties, and alluding to the faint attempts of the two great verifiers of his day, Hildebert de Lavardin and Wichard of Lyons, he exclaims: "I may then aert, not in otentation, but with humble confidence, that if I had not received directly from on high the gift of inpiration and intelligence, I had not dared to attempt an enterprie o little accorded to the powers of the human mind."