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Poems

St Paulinus of Nola, tr. Evelyn White, Loeb 1921; selections

Chapter 30

Paulinus¹ to Ausonius

Thou tellest me that my tongue keeps unbroken silence while thou art never dumb, and reproachest me with choosing idleness in secret retreats, and withal addest the charge of neglected friendship and tauntest me with terror of my spouse, launching a cruel line against my very heart.² Cease, I prithee, to wound thy friend, and seek not to mingle bitterness—as wormwood with honey—with a father’s words.

My care has been and still endures, to honour thee with every friendly token, to compass thee with faithful affection. No blemish, however slight, has ever marred my devotion towards thee; even by a look I have ever feared to hurt thee and to wrong thee with an unguarded aspect; and when I have approached thee, out of respect I have the more heedfully ordered my looks and given my features a bright and cheerful cast, that no ungrounded suspicion might bring down a cloud upon thee, my revered father, even though arising from an unspoken thought. After like pattern my household has honoured and honours thee, and in love for thee we are as agreed together as our hearts are linked together in worship of Christ.

What rancour, I beg of thee, against thy friends is crept over thy heart? With what idle tale has nimble Slander forced her way into thy ears, smitten thy fond heart, and aimed late blows against the tried affection of ancient faith, so as to harm a son by cozening a sire from his peace?

But my heart is conscious of no feigned sincerity, my devotion, guiltless of neglect towards my father, hurls back with scorn every undeserved taunt, and brooks not to be scarred with a false charge because in truth innocent: as easy hurt as it is free from fault, it is the more sorely injured by an unjust blow.

Thou dost complain that I have shaken off the yoke³ wherewith I was joined with thee in the pursuit of letters. This I declare that I have never even borne. For only equals share one yoke: no one links the powerful with the weak, and no team works with one will, if the forced yoke-fellows are of unequal measure. If thou dost match calves with bulls or horses with wild-asses; if thou comparest moorhens with swans, and nightingales with owls, hazels with chestnuts, or rankest wayside shrubs with cypresses;—then place me beside thee: Tully and Maro scarce could uphold a like yoke with thee. If I be yoked in love, in that alone will I dare boast myself thy yoke-fellow wherein the humble vies with the great in even career. Sweet friendship makes us peers through the eternal bond betwixt me and thee and through the equal laws of endless mutual love. This yoke no malicious tale has unloosed from my neck, no long absence from my land has broken it nor ever shall destroy it, though I should be removed from thee by the whole span of space and time. Never shall I live separate from thee in soul: sooner shall life itself depart from my frame than thy face from my heart.

Through all the length of time given to mortals and ordained, so long as I shall be confined in this halting frame, though I be held a world apart, thee neither parted by a world nor severed from my sight I will keep implanted in my inmost being: in heart I shall see thee, in loving thought embrace thee, having thee with me everywhere. And when, released from the prison of the body, I shall have flown forth from the earth, in whatever clime our general Father shall place me, there also will I bear thee in my heart; nor shall the selfsame end which severs me from my body, unloose me from love of thee. For the soul, which, surviving the body’s ruin, endures in virtue of heavenly birth, must needs keep both its own faculties and affections no less than its own life, and so admits forgetfulness no more than death, remaining ever living, ever mindful.

Farewell, illustrious master.

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