Poems 10.1–14.96

This is now the fourth summer returning for the hard-working reapers, and as often has winter stiffened with white frost, since any letter came to me from your lips, since I saw any writing marked by your hand, until at last a happy sheet, with a welcome little book, gave me gifts long denied, multiplied. For a threefold letter flowered with varied texture, but the threefold page was a poem in many measures. Anxious affection had mixed certain sweet things beneath bitter ones, in complaints of many kinds of censure. But it is the gentleness of a father, more than the bitterness of a censor, that has settled with me, and I weigh the harsh things by the kind. Those things, however, must be answered in their own place and handled with the weightier sound of the avenging hexameter. Meanwhile the lighter iambus will run ahead in a few lines, returning words in exchange in its distinct foot. Now the elegiacs bid you hail, and, the greeting spoken, having made the opening and the step for the others, fall silent. Why, father, do you bid the Muses, whom I have renounced, to return to my care? Hearts dedicated to Christ refuse the Camenae and are not open to Apollo. Once there was this harmony between you and me, not of equal power but of equal zeal: to rouse deaf Phoebus from his Delphic cave, to call on the Muses as deities, and to seek from groves or ridges the gift of speech, which is granted by the gift of God. Now another power drives my mind, a greater God, and demands other ways, claiming back for himself from man his own gift, that we may live for the Father of life.

He forbids us to be free for vain things, in leisure or in business, and for the literature of fables, so that we may obey his laws and see his light, which the cunning force of the philosophers, the art of rhetoricians, and the fictions of the poets cloud over, who steep hearts in false and vain things and train only tongues, bringing nothing that might confer salvation or cover us with truth. For what good or true thing can they hold who do not hold the head of the highest, God, the kindling and the fountain of the true and the good, whom no one sees except in Christ? He is the light of truth, the way of life, the power, mind, hand, and strength of the Father, the sun of justice, the fountain of good things, the flower of God, born of God, sower of the world, the life of our mortality and the death of death; he is the master of the virtues; God for us and man on our behalf, he stripped himself by putting us on, joining in himself, in both natures, eternal exchanges between men and God. So when he has darted his own radiance from heaven into our hearts, he wipes away the sick mould of the sluggish body and renews the condition of the mind; he drains out all that used to please before, in exchange for chaste pleasure, and by the Lord's right wholly claims our hearts and lips and times;

he wills to be thought of, understood, believed, read; he wills to be feared and loved. The empty surges which the toil of life stirs along the path of the present age are abolished by faith in the future life with God. That faith does not cast away the riches which we seem to scorn as profane or worthless, but counsels that, as dearer, they be stored in heaven, entrusted to Christ God, who has promised more than what is given, so that what is scorned, or rather deposited with him, in the present he may repay with much interest. A guardian without fraud, a good debtor, he will return increased sums to his creditors, and God, more generous, will restore with much usury the money that was scorned. So do not, I pray, think me sluggish or perverse if I am free for him, or study him and am devoted to him, storing up all things in him, nor accuse me of impiety. How can piety be absent from a Christian? For being a Christian is the proof of piety, and not being subject to Christ is the proof of the impious, each of the other. When we learn to hold this, can I fail to show it to you, that is, to a father, to whom God willed that I should owe all holy rights and dear names? To you I owe my learning, rank, letters, the glory of tongue, toga, and fame, advanced, raised up, instructed by you, my patron, teacher, father.

But why do you charge me with living so long far away, and grow angry with a loving emotion? Either it is useful, or it is necessary, or it pleases me; whichever of these is in it is pardonable. Forgive me, loving one, if I do what is good for me; congratulate me, if I live as I please. That I have been away from my native land for three whole years and, wandering astray, have chosen another world, forgetful of the fellowship of your life which I once cultivated, you rebuke me with holy complaints, moved by affection. I embrace these emotions, worthy of reverence, from a father's heart, and your anger, which I must welcome with my affection unharmed. But I would rather, father, that you sought my return from where it could be granted. Am I to believe I shall be called back to you when you pour out barren prayers, not to the divine, but as a suppliant to the Castalian Muses, with heaven turned away? Not by these deities do you bring me back to you and to my country. You call on deaf things and ask from nothing (a light breeze will carry off what is given into nothing): the Muses, names without divinity. The windy storms snatch away these useless prayers, which, not sent to God, cling to the empty clouds and do not reach the starry hall of the King above. If you care about my return, look to him and pray to him who with thunder shakes the fiery heights of highest heaven, who flashes with three-forked fire and mingles no empty rumblings, and who from heaven bestows suns and rains on the sown fields, who, above all that is, and wholly everywhere in all, rules all things through Christ, poured into all things, through whom he holds and moves minds, through whom he disposes our times and places. But if he should ordain things contrary to our wishes, he must be bent by prayer to what we want. Why do you accuse me? If the course I follow, God driving me, displeases you, then, if it is lawful to say so, the author is the first defendant, whose pleasure it is either to form or to turn my thoughts.

For if you reckon my former ways, those known to you, I will freely confess that I am not now the man I was at that time, when I was not thought perverse and was perverse, seeing through the fog of falsehood, wise in what is foolish to God, and living on the food of death. So it is all the more right that I be pardoned, because from this it is more readily granted to recognize that I am renewed by the highest Father, since what is done is not done in my own way. I shall not, I think, be said to have confessed here a branded error of a mind changed for the worse, since I have freely professed that I did not change my former life by my own mind. A new mind is mine, I confess, a mind not mine, once not mine, but mine now by God's authorship; and if he has seen anything in my conduct or character worthy of his service, the first thanks go to you, the glory due goes to you, by whose teaching was produced what Christ might love. So you have more cause to congratulate than to complain that your Paulinus, born of your studies and your character, whose parent you do not deny you are, has now, though you believe him perverse, so turned his counsels that he has earned the right to be Christ's while he remains Ausonius's; he will bring his rewards to your praise and will offer you the first fruit from your own tree. So I pray you to think better things, and not to lose the greatest rewards by cursing good things that sprang from your own fountains.

For I do not have a mad mind, nor do I live the fugitive life that shuns the company of men, as you write that the rider of Pegasus lived in the caves of Lycia; even though many dwell in pathless places under God's prompting, as famous philosophers did before for the sake of their studies and their Muses, and as now also those who have taken up Christ with chaste minds often do, not poor in mind, nor choosing out of wildness to live in deserted places, but turned to the lofty stars, beholding God, and intent on looking into the depths of truth; they love leisure free from vain cares and shrink from the din of the forum and the tumult of affairs and all business hostile to divine gifts, out of regard for Christ's commands and love of salvation, and with hope and faith follow God for the promised reward, which the sure Author will pay to those who do not despair, if only present things do not prevail with their empty goods, and the mind scorns what it sees, that it may earn what it does not see, its fiery sense penetrating heavenly secrets. For perishable things lie open to our sight, eternal things are denied to our eyes, and now we follow in hope what we see with the mind, scorning the varied forms, the spectacles of things, and the goods that wrongly solicit the bodily eyes. Yet this judgment seemed settled to those to whom the whole light of the true and the good has already opened: the eternity of the age to come and the emptiness of the present. But why should I, who do not have the same glory, have the same reputation? A known man's report is equally believed; but since I now still live in pleasant and charming places, settled on the shore of a wealthy coast, whence comes this hasty envy of my places? Would that a just envy would begin to pluck at me: under the name of Christ reproaches will please me.

A mind firm in God does not allow a tender sense of shame, and praise scorned here returns to me with Christ as judge. So do not, revered parent, rebuke me as wrongly turned to these pursuits, nor carp at me for my wife or for a fault of mind; mine is not the anxious mind of Bellerophon, nor is my wife a Tanaquil, but a Lucretia. Nor do I seem now to have forgotten my native heaven, I who look up to the highest Father; whoever worships him alone here truly remembers heaven. Believe then, father, that we are neither forgetful of heaven nor living without mind, and that we spend our lives in places where men live; the very pursuits of the godly bear witness to the characters of men; for an impious people will not be able to know the highest God. Granted that many places, many, are untilled by men's pursuits, without laws: what region lacks rustic custom? Or what harm does the wickedness of others do in such places? Why do you cast up to me the wild forests of Vasconia and the snowy lodgings of the Pyrenees, as if I lived fixed at the very first threshold of the Spanish region, and had no place anywhere in country or city, where rich Spain lies open all the way to the edge of the world, beholding the setting suns? But suppose it was my lot to have lived on robbers' ridges: did I grow wild by a barbarian hearth, changed into those very people among whom I had settlers sharing their savagery? A pure mind does not admit evil, nor do stains sprinkled on light fibres stick; so in a Basque forest whoever leads a life pure of crime, upright, just, draws no contagion of manners from an inhuman host. But why should a charge be laid against me from that name, I who live, as I have lived, in different places, joined to proud cities and thronged with the glad cultivation of men?

And even if I had lived on the Basque coasts, why should the barbarian people not rather be formed by my ways, lay aside their savage rites and pass over into ours? For as to your placing my dwelling in ruined Iberian cities, choosing deserted towns for your verse, and reproaching me with mountainous Calagurris, and Bilbilis hanging on sharp crags, and the hill of fallen Ilerda, as if I lived among them, an exile from house and city, outside the homes and roads of men: do you think, ignorant of the Spanish world, that these are the riches of the Iberian land, where that Atlas stood under the heavy weight of the sky, now its last portion, a mountain and the boundary of the earth, which with its lofty peak shuts off two-sea Calpe? Is this land known only for Bilbilis, Calagurris, Ilerda, the land that has Caesarea Augusta, that has pleasant Barcino, and Tarraco, looking down on the sea from its noble height? Why should I count the cities excellent in lands and walls, where happy Spain stretches toward the twin sea, where it swells the Ocean with the Baetis and the Tyrrhenian with the Ebro and fills the wide divide of the distant seas, setting its own bound at the limit of the world? Or would you, my illustrious lord, if you had a mind to write in what region you live, be pleased to keep silent about shining Burdigala and to describe the pitch-black Boii? And when you spend your leisure lavishly at the baths of Marojalicum and grant yourself to live among shady groves, dwelling in places glad and in houses wonderful under their roofs, do you live in blackened huts and hovels thatched with straw and wilds fit for the skin-clad Bigerri? And you, a powerful consul, who despise the proud walls of Rome, do you not scorn the sandy Vasates?

Or, because your fertile estate grows green in the fields of the Pictones, shall I lament that, alas, the Ausonian curule chair has come down to Rauranum, and that the consular robe grows shabby in an old shrine, that robe which nevertheless, in the august city of Latian Quirinus, shines among the emperors' palm-embroidered robes with equal title, long venerable with unworn gold, keeping the flourishing honour of living merit? Or when you are kept at the summit of your estate at Lucaniacus, living under roofs that rival the halls of Romulus, shall you be said, because the place supplies the material, since it marks what lies nearby, to live in the village of Condate? Let much be open to jests; let it be allowed to play with fictions too. But to strike in a heavy tooth while the tongue soothes, to play with burning flatteries and to leaven ill-sweet jests with the vinegar of biting satire, is often fitting for poets, never for parents. For faith and affection require that what evil rumour, weaving its web, insinuates into chaste ears, the good mind of a father, by its wish, should not allow to be fixed and, once fixed, to cling to the heart. The crowd, malicious with ill-omened rumour, counts it a crime not always to keep one's life to the ways one held before; but to turn for the better deserves praise. When you hear that I am changed, inquire into my pursuit and my duty. If I have changed from right to wrong, from religious to profane, from frugal to luxurious, from honourable to shameful, if I live sluggish, idle, obscure, pity your companion, turned to evil; let anger rouse even a gentle parent to restore his fallen friend to upright ways and to repair better things by stern warning.

But if perhaps you hear likewise what I have chosen and what I follow: that I have vowed my heart to the godly God, following the venerable rule of Christ with teachable belief, and persuaded by God's warnings that eternal rewards are prepared, bought by a mortal with present losses, I do not think that this has so displeased my holy parent that he believes it an error of mind to live for Christ as Christ has ordained. This pleases me, nor do I repent of this error. To seem foolish to those who follow other things I do not mind at all, so long as my judgment is wise to the eternal King. Brief is whatever man is: he is of a sick body, of a setting time, and without Christ dust and shadow; what he approves or condemns is worth as much as the judge himself. He himself dies, and his error goes along with him, and the judgment passes away, dying with its judge. But unless, while the present time is given, we take anxious care to live by the precept of Christ the Lord, too late will be man's complaint when he has put off his limbs that, while he feared the light reproaches of human tongues, he did not fear the heavy anger of the divine Judge, who sits on the throne and at the right hand of the eternal Father, set over all as king, and who, as the years glide by, will come to judge all nations with an even balance and render to their varied deeds their rewards; this I believe indeed, and, fearful, I labour with hastening zeal, if it may be granted, not to be released by death before I am released from sin.

At his coming my believing heart trembles with quivering fibres, and my soul, already wary of the future, is restless, fearing beforehand that, bound to the body by sick cares and heavy with the weights of things, if perhaps the vast trumpet should sound when the sky is opened, it could not raise itself into the air on light wings to meet the King, flying among the honoured thousands of the saints in heaven, who, light through the void, will lift their feet, not bound by the world's fetter, to the lofty stars with easy effort, and, carried on soft clouds, will go through the stars, to worship the heavenly King in the midst of the air and join their bright ranks with the adored Christ. This is my fear, this my labour: that the last day may catch me asleep in black darkness, in barren activity, spending lost times in empty cares. For what shall I do if, while I blink over sluggish prayers, Christ, revealed from his heavenly citadel, flashes upon me, and, dazzled by the sudden rays of the Lord coming from the opened heaven, confounded by the light brought upon me, I seek the sad refuges of dark night? So that neither distrust of the truth nor love of the present life, nor the pleasure of things, nor the labour of cares, might bring this upon me, I have resolved to forestall misfortune by my purpose, and to end my cares while life remains, and, relying on God, who is common to all for the ages to come, to await cruel death with a carefree breast. If this pleases you, rejoice in the rich hope of your friend; if not, leave me to be approved by Christ alone.

You recall that the silence of my tongue has lasted long without a break, and you reproach me with a sloth that delights in hiding, and you add besides the charge of neglected friendship, and throw in my face a wife to be feared, and hurl a harsh verse into my heart. Refrain, I pray, from tearing one who is yours, and do not wish to mix bitter things with fatherly words, like wormwood with honey. It has always been and remains my care to honour you with every duty and to respect you with faithful affection. Never has your favour been stained for me even by the slightest blemish; I always feared to hurt you even by my face or to offend you by a careless expression. And when I approached you reverently, I composed my face more carefully and formed my brow with glad eyes, so that no false suspicion might draw toward my holy parent a cloud gathered even in a silent breast. By this example my household has cherished you and cherishes you, and so great is our agreement in love for you, as great as in worshipping Christ with joined minds. What envy, I ask, has clouded your heart against your own? By what rumour has easy report burst through your godly ears and struck your mind, and, against the old trust proved by affection, stirred new wounds, so that, counselling evil, it should set a gentle parent against his children? But my mind, conscious of unfeigned simplicity, and my duty toward a father I have not neglected, being guiltless, rejects every undeserved charge and does not bear to be grazed by a false accusation, being truly innocent; one is wounded more heavily by an unjust wound when one is as tender to offence as one is free of guilt. You complain that I have shaken off the yoke by which I was joined to you in learned studies. I assert that I never even bore it; for equals go under yokes; no one couples the strong with the weak, nor are reins in harmony if the measure of the yoked pair is unequal.

If you match a calf with a bull or a horse with a wild ass, if you compare coots with swans and the nightingale with the magpie, hazels with chestnuts, if you make viburnums equal to cypresses, then set me beside you; scarcely could Tully and Maro bear an equal yoke with you. If I am joined to you in love, in this alone will I dare to boast that I am your yoke-mate: that sweet friendship, with its reins, draws the small along with the great, in an eternal bond between me and you, always equal in its laws of returning love. This yoke no sinister tale has loosed from my neck, no long absence has severed in the lands, nor will it destroy it. Though I be drawn away over the whole world or for all time, I shall never live divided from you in mind; sooner will life itself depart from my body than your face from my breast. Through all the age that is given and appointed to mortals, as long as I am held in the enclosing body, in whatever part of the world I am separated from you, not far off, nor removed from my sight, I shall hold you, planted in my fibres; I shall see you with my heart, embrace you with a loving mind, present to me everywhere. And when, freed from the prison of the body, I have flown forth from the earth, in whatever region of heaven the common Father places me, there too I shall bear you in my soul. Nor will the same end that releases me from my body release me from my love for you. For the mind, which, surviving the fallen limbs, endures from its heavenly stock, must keep its feelings and affections as it keeps its life; and as it cannot die, so it cannot forget, ever living and remembering.

Famous confessor, Felix by merit and by name, mind mighty in piety, mind dwelling in highest heaven, and no less a power experienced in all the lands, who, confessing Christ the Lord with unfettered voice, earned by scorning them to escape savage punishments, and, bidden to give back to Christ a soul devoted through all torments, your limbs released of their own accord, left the raging lictors your empty limbs, carried to heavenly honour, a martyr without blood: O father, O lord, though we are unworthy, nod assent to your servants, that at last, while we drag out this life in a frail body, we may celebrate this day in the longed-for dwelling and in the hall where you rest, pay our godly vows in your presence, and rejoice among the rejoicing throngs. Let it now be enough, I pray, to have borne this punishment for deserved impiety, that we have lived so many years without you, far, alas, from your dwelling, though not removed in mind. Now take thought for desires wearied by an immense time, now, though late, remember and pity your own, and through the world, which divides us by so wide an expanse of the great sea, crush what hostilely holds us back and open easy ways; and if the envious enemy stands in the way of those hastening to you, drive back the barriers he throws up, stronger than adversaries, and speed a friendly course. If a land journey pleases, be a companion on a safe road to your own; or if great trust in you persuades us to go by the long sea, grant us to run on gentle waves, and supply servant winds from the stern for your servants, so that, brought at once to the Campanian shores, with Christ as guide, we may soon be swept with eager course to your roof, and in your threshold there may be a calm harbour for us. There we shall bear a sweet yoke, a light burden, a pleasant servitude under you as lord; though, being just, you need no unjust servants, yet you will suffer and love such as we are, dedicated to you by Christ's gift, and allow us to serve at your doors, to care for your thresholds in the morning with cleaning, and by night in turn to guard them with godly vigils, and in this service to close a life spent, with a wearied body.

Felix, rightly so by name and likewise so by merit as by name, the kindly day returns on which Christ took you, a confessor, into the supreme hall of the fatherland; the time is here to pour out thanks to you with full prayers. O father, O lord, best one, though to unworthy servants, at last it has been granted to our prayers to celebrate your birthday within your thresholds. Three lustra have run their long course since, at these solemnities, I dedicated my vows to you in your presence, and my heart. Since then, what labours by land and sea have kept me far from your dwelling in a distant world, you know; for I always called on you as near me everywhere, amid the hardships of the road and the uncertainties of life. And I entered the seas with you as guide, because care for danger gave way to love of you; nor was I without you; for I felt your protection in Christ the Lord as I overcame the roughness of the sea; always, because of you, I am safe on land and wave. Ask, I pray, that this day be serene for your own with eternal kindness and peace from him by whose great name you stand, Felix. Now it delights to let our minds overflow in joy, since the dear day has at last dawned here for us who are present, the day which we always celebrated in a foreign world, the day that consecrated you to the earth and brought you to the stars. Behold, the many-coloured people paint the roads with varied columns; we marvel at countless cities in one city. O Nola, happy in your Felix as patron, famous for your holy citizen, made firm by a heavenly patron, and, after Rome herself, allotted the second titles, Rome which before was first of the earth only by empire and victorious arms, and now also by the tombs of the apostles! Be kind, O Felix, and propitious to your own, and entreat the mighty Lord that by the gift of Christ appeased, after the waves of the sea and the waves of the world have been passed, we may come to rest at your anchorage, in a calm harbour. On this shore I have tied up my fleet, drawn well ashore; in you let the anchor of my settled life be fixed.

The festal day has come, celebrated in heaven, thronged on earth, keeping the birthday of Felix, on which he died to the earth in body and was born to Christ among the stars above, gaining heavenly honour, a martyr without blood. For the confessor died having escaped his punishments not by his own will, God accepting a faithful mind instead of blood, God who, the searcher of the silent heart, makes those ready to bear equal to those who suffered, and, content to have proved the inner man, in just kindness remits the punishment of the flesh; martyrdom without slaughter pleases him, if a mind and faith ready to bear glow before God; the will to suffer suffices and is the highest testimony of known merit. So this is the day, with holy solemnities, which by so great a gift established Felix on high in heaven: after the solstice in which Christ, born in the body, changed the season of icy winter with a new sun, and, giving a saving birth to mortals, ordered the nights to wane along with him as the day advanced, the twentieth light that dawns for us from it marks the starry honour of Felix's merit. Finally, in no way unequal to those witnesses who shed their blood, he shows the merit of a martyr, received in title and in power alike, when with mighty right he drives out demons and frees bound bodies. For the pestilent chiefs confess with gloomy cries that Felix is pressing upon them with unseen punishments, and with open groans testify to hidden torments, and they reveal him, veiled from mortal eyes but manifest to the ears and present in great power, when, caught within the captive bodies, they cry out and prove that Christ shines in his saint, trembling, by the shaking of limbs and the rolling of heads, and by their tortures; but they do not torment their own bodies, crying their own pains through others' mouths, begging pardon; the avenger is hidden, the punishment is seen.

Then, if the more violent enemy has bound any with heavier evil, this day looses them by divine power. Now one may see everywhere breasts purged by a holy remedy lying prostrate at the thresholds, now restored in mind, now giving thanks with their own voice; a trembling crowd of gaping men runs together, tears burst forth mixed with joy for all, God is believed present to all there; Felix is the glory of the immeasurable Christ. The kindly day is celebrated by great gatherings; all dedicate fulfilled vows at the holy doorposts; all things of earth and heaven rejoice; the upper air seems to smile with the heavens opened, the breezes to breathe spring with silent gusts, and the milky zone to gird the glad sky. There is no limit, no rest, for the peoples gathering in dense columns; they hasten from night into light, and it irks them to wait for the day; the night's delay to eager vows is broken, and torches conquer night with flames. It delights to see one city crowded with many cities and so many swarms driven together by one vow. The Lucanian peoples gather, the youth of Apulia gather, and the Calabrians, and all whom either tide washes, which sounds round Latium with wave on left and right; and joyful Campania, through its sixty cities, rejoices as at its own festival: those whom rich Capua holds in its broad walls, those whom fair Neapolis, or those whom Gaurus feeds, who work the glad Massic slopes, and those who drink the Ufens and the Sarnus, who till the dry fields of the Tanager and the happy farms of the watered Galaesus, those whom mighty Atina, whom mother Aricia sends.

And Rome herself, mighty with the sacred monuments of the heavenly chiefs, Peter and Paul, rejoices to be thinned out in honour of this day, and, pouring out thousands from the mouth of the Capena gate, sends them to the walls of friendly Nola over ten times twelve miles in a dense column; far and wide the Appian Way lies hidden by the packed crowds. No less, by peoples setting out from another region, the rough pavements of the mountainous Latin Way are worn, those whom lofty Praeneste, whom fertile Aquinum feeds, and those whom ancient Ardea sends from the suburban coasts, and those who have left the city of Cales and twin Teanum, which the stern Auruncan or the rough Apulian inhabits; hither too runs a crowd from olive-bearing Venafrum, and the hardy Samnites leave their mountain towns. Piety conquered the hard road; the love of Christ conquers all things, and kindly faith persuades those stiff in mind and in place to suffer harsh things and at the same time to lay aside harsh hearts. One day calls all, and one Nola receives them, full of itself through its whole space and spacious enough for all, so that you might believe its walls are widened for the countless guests. So, Nola, you rise up in the likeness of Rome. You also, under a double honour, have embraced everlasting crowns of your Felix, first as priest, then as martyr, through every age; mother of a divine friend, you touch heaven well by twofold merit. As presbyter he first founded you, celebrating the kindly altars with godly worship, and ruled you with gentle governance. Now too Felix adorns you with his everlasting name.

For, consecrated in your bosom, he draws honour from his merit, his godly bones laid in a fragrant tomb. Now the golden thresholds are adorned with snow-white curtains, the bright altars are crowned with crowded lamps, fragrant lights burn on waxed papyrus wicks, they glitter night and day. So night shines with the splendour of day, and the day itself, illustrious with heavenly honour, shines more brightly, its light doubled by countless lamps. We too are happy, to whom it is given to see this day in person and to celebrate it, and to behold our patron's rewards, and to congratulate Christ who grants such great things to his own, and to rejoice amid the glad throngs. Bring praise to God, boys, pay your godly vows, and likewise give festal songs with chaste dances; strew the ground with flowers, fringe the thresholds with garlands. Let winter breathe a purple spring, let the year be flowery before its time, let nature yield to the holy day. You too, earth, owe garlands to the martyr's tomb; but the sacred glory of the threshold above surrounds him, flourishing with the double crown of war and of peace. Ask, I pray, that this day be serene for us with eternal peace; may it be granted to rejoice when it returns again, and to pay here at your festivals yearly vows and songs, with Christ's divinity appeased and calm. This is our love, this our labour; receive these vows of your own and commend them to God, so that, when with diligent care our service has been paid to you over a long age, then at last you may release your nurslings, pleasing by their godly labour, sending them on with your hand, and not refuse to carry the souls of your own, placed before your face, in your fatherly bosom to the face of the shining Lord, whom, kind in goodness but dreadful in majesty, entreat, that, gentle to your prayers and merits, he may forgive us our debts. When you also, a great part of the godly, Felix, accompany the reigning Lamb, ask that we be set in the flock of sheep, so that the sentence of the highest Judge may give us to you again as this gift too, and not assign us to the left-hand goats, who have ill thanked him, but rather place us on the right, in the portion of the godly, and gather us to the bountiful flock and the praised lambs.