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Poems

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

Chapter 31

’Tis the fourth summer now returns for hardy reapers, and as oft has winter grown stark with hoary rime, since any syllable from thy lips reached me, since I saw any letter penned by thy hand—ere thy page, auspicious with its message of greeting, bestowed manifold the gift so long denied. For indeed ’twas a triple letter enriched with various flowers of composition, but the melodious sheets were a three-fold poem. Things sweet, though somewhat soured with manifold complaints, troubled affection had mingled with criticism. But with me the father’s gentleness rather than the critic’s bitterness finds a resting place, and in my heart I draw from the kindly words what may weigh against the harsh. But these charges must be refuted in their proper place and canvassed in the sterner tones of the avenging heroic measure. Meanwhile, though briefly, lighter iambus shall hurry on ahead, in separate metre¹ paying back his debt of words.

Now my elegiacs bid thee “hail” and having hailed thee, since they have made for others a beginning and a step, cease to speak.

Paulinus to Ausonius

Why dost thou bid the deposed Muses return to my affection, my father? Hearts consecrate to Christ give refusal to the Camenae, are closed to Apollo. Once was there this accord betwixt me and thee, equals in zeal but not in power—to call forth deaf Apollo from his Delphic cave, to invoke the Muses as divine, to seek from groves or hills the gift of utterance by the god’s gift bestowed. Now ’tis another force governs my heart, a greater God, who demands another mode of life, claiming for himself from man the gift he gave, that we may live for the Father of life. To spend time on empty things, whether in pastime or pursuit, and on literature full of idle tales, he forbids; that we may obey his laws and behold his light which sophists’ cunning skill, the art of rhetoric, and poets’ feignings overcloud. For these steep our hearts in things false and vain, and train our tongues alone imparting naught which can reveal the truth. For what good thing or true can they hold who hold not the head of all, God, the enkindler and source of the good and true, whom no man seeth save in Christ.

He is the light of truth, the path of life, the strength, mind, hand, and power of the Father, the sun of righteousness, the fount of blessings, the flower of God, born of God, creator of the world, life of our mortality and death of Death. He, the Lord of Virtues, to us God and for us Man, puts on our nature as we must put on his, linking God with man in perpetual intercourse, himself of each partaking. He, then, when he has launched his beams from heaven upon our hearts, wipes off the sorry filth of our dull bodies and renews the disposition of our hearts: he draws forth all which aforetime used to please, giving unsullied pleasure in return, and absolutely with a master’s right claims both our hearts and lips and time. He seeks himself to engross our thoughts, our minds, belief and choice, himself to be feared and loved. Those aimless surges, which the toils of life stir up in the course of this present span of time, are brought to naught by faith in a life to come with God. This casts not away the riches, which we are thought to scorn, as unhallowed or little worth, but, as more dear, bids them be laid up in Heaven in trust with Christ our God, who has promised more than he receives, to pay back with large usury those things now despised or rather laid up in his keeping. A faithful guardian, an unfailing debtor, he will repay with increase wealth entrusted to him, and of his bounty God with abundant interest will restore the money we have spurned.

To Him given up, whether waiting or serving, in Him laying up my all, think me not, I beseech thee, slothful nor wayward, nor charge me with want of filial piety. How can piety be wanting in a Christian? For “piety” has the acquired meaning to be a Christian, and “the impious” one not subject to Christ. When I am learning to hold fast this, can I fail to show it toward thee, that is, towards my father, to whom God has willed that I should owe all sacred duties and names of affection? To thee I owe training, honours, learning, my pride of eloquence, of civil rank, of reputation, being by thee advanced, fostered, and instructed, my patron, tutor, father.

But why do I live so long retired, thou askest reproachfully, and art stirred with a loving anger. It is expedient, or ’tis necessary, or ’tis my pleasure: whichever of these it be, it will be pardonable. Forgive me, as I love thee, if I do what is convenient; be thankful if I live as pleases me.

Paulinus to Ausonius

That I shall be absent from my native land full three years’ space, and that I have traversed another world in aimless wanderings, forgetful of that fellowship in thy life, once cherished—thou dost reproach me with complaints hallowed by the love whence they spring. I welcome with reverence due the emotions of a father’s heart and the anger which claims my gratitude leaving affection unimpaired. Yet for my return, my father, I would rather thou should’st ask it there where it can be granted. Shall I believe that thou canst call me back to thee while thou pourest forth barren prayers to beings not divine, suppliant to the Castalian Muses while God turns from thee? Not through such deities wilt thou bring me back to thee and to my country. Thou call’st the deaf, implorest things of naught—a light breeze will bear away what is addressed to a nothing—the Muses, who are names but non-entities. The stormy winds whirl away ineffectual such prayers as these, which, not addressed to God, catch in the empty clouds nor make their way into the starry court of the King of Heaven.

If thou carest for my return, look towards him and pray to him who with his thunder shakes the fiery heights of highest Heaven, who shoots forth his triple flash of flame, nor mingles it with idle sounds, who on the crops graciously bestows sunshine and rains from heaven, who being above all that is, or wholly in all things everywhere, reigns over all through Christ who permeates all things: through whom he occupies and sways our minds, through whom he orders our times and places. But if he ordains things opposed to our hopes, by prayer he may be turned aside to that which we desire.

Why blamest thou me? If thou mislikest the course which I pursue under God’s influence, there is an earlier step: let the Author be accused, who is pleased either to shape or change my feelings. For if thou thinkest my nature is as of old and as ’twas known to thee, I will avow of myself that now I am not the man I was about that time when I was not thought wayward though wayward I was, seeing with the darkness of error, wise in what with God is foolishness,² and living on the food of death. Wherefore thou art the more bound to pardon me, because by this the more readily ’tis permitted thee to recognize that this change is from the most high Father—that ’tis not in accordance with my nature: by this I shall not, methinks, be held to have admitted a lamentable distraction of a mind changed for the worse, since I have openly avowed that not my own mind has caused me to change my former life. I have a new mind, I confess—a mind not my own: not mine aforetime, though mine now through God’s influence—and if in my deeds or thoughts he sees anything worthy for his gifts, to thee chief gratitude, to thee the glory falls due, since thy instruction has produced what Christ could love.

Wherefore thou shouldst give thanks rather than complain because I—that son of thine, offspring of thy learning and thy character, Paulinus, whose parentage thou dost not deny, even now when thou believest me wayward—have so changed my principles that I have gained grace to become the child of Christ while I am the child of Ausonius. He will confer his rewards upon thy merit and from this tree of thine proffer the first fruit to thee.

And so, I pray thee, think nobler thoughts and lose not the highest rewards by execrating good things which have their source from thee. For indeed my mind does not wander, nor even does my life flee from intercourse with men—even as thou writest that Pegasus’ rider lived in Lycian caves³—albeit many dwell in pathless places through God’s leading, just as before them men famous among the sages did for the sake of their learning and their inspiration. Even so in these days also, they who with pure hearts have adopted Christ are wont to live—not as beside themselves, nor out of savagery choosing to dwell in desert places; but because—turning their faces to the stars on high, contemplating God, and intent to scan the deep wells of truth—they love repose void of empty cares, and shun the din of public life, the bustle of affairs, and all concerns hostile to the gifts of Heaven both by Christ’s command and in desire for salvation. By hope and faith these follow God for the pledged reward which he, whose promise cannot fail, will bestow on such as persevere, if only this present life with its vain interests does not prevail, and the fiery perceptions, penetrating to Heaven’s secret places, scorn what they see to gain what they see not. For things perishable are open to our sight, the eternal are denied; and now in hope we pursue what with the mind we see, scorning the various shapes, the images of things, and the attractions which provoke our natural sight. And yet such resolve has been found to lodge in those to whom already is revealed the light of the good and true, the eternity of the world to come and the emptiness of that which is.

But I, who have not the same cause for boasting, why do I bear the same reproach? My surety of hope is no less; but since I dwell in pleasant places, and even now abide upon the agreeable shores of a prosperous coast, whence this so premature carping at my abode? I would that jealousy with good grounds may begin to pluck at me: bearing the name of Christ I shall welcome taunts. A mind strengthened by power divine feels no weak shame, and the praise I here despise is restored to me when Christ is judge.

Do not, then, chide me, my honoured father, as though I had turned to these pursuits perversely, and do not twit me with my wife or with defect of mind: mine is not the perturbed mind of Bellerophon, nor is my wife a Tanaquil but a Lucretia. Nor am I now forgetful, as thou thinkest, of the heavens ’neath which my fathers dwelt, seeing that I look up to the all-highest Father, and that whoso worships Him alone he is truly mindful of Heaven.⁴ Believe then, father, that I am not unmindful of the heavens and do not live distraught in mind, but dwell in a civilized place: pursuits themselves bear witness to the character of righteous men; for an unrighteous race will not be able to know the most high God: granted that much of the country, much of the folk is unimproved and ignorant of laws, yet what tract is without its rustic worship? Or what offence in them is wickedness common to other parts?⁵ And yet thou dost taunt me with the woodlands of Vasconia and snowy lodgings in the Pyrenees, as though I live tied down at the very frontier of the whole realm of Spain and have no place of my own anywhere in country or in town, where wealthy Spain outstretched along the world’s boundary watches the suns dip down into the sea. But suppose it had been my lot to dwell amid the hills of brigands, have I become a block in a savage’s hut, changed into the very serfs amid whom I lived, partaking of their wildness? A pure heart admits no evil, even as filth spattered upon smooth bristles does not stick: if one without stain of wickedness spends his life in a Vasconian glade, his character, unblemished as before, draws no infection from his host’s barbarity. But why am I charged on that account when I dwell, as I have dwelt, in a far different country bordering on splendid cities and thickly covered with man’s prosperous tillage? And if my life had been led on the borders of Vasconia, why should not the savage folk rather have been moulded after my mode of life, laying aside their barbarous customs to come over to our own?

For whereas thou dost fix my Spanish dwelling-place in ruined cities, traversing in thy verse desolate towns, and castest in my teeth mountain Calahorra, Bambola hanging from its jagged crags, and Lerida prostrate on its hill-side—as though, an exile from home and city, I were dwelling in these far from the dwellings and highways of men; dost thou believe these are the resources of the Iberian land, ignorant of the Spanish world where laden Atlas took his stand beneath the load of Heaven, he whose mountain, now the furthest fragment and boundary of the earth, shuts out with its lofty peak Calpe that lies betwixt two seas? Are only Bambola, Calahorra, Lerida, placed to the credit of this land which has its Saragossa, pleasant Barcelona, and Tarragona looking from majestic heights down to the sea?

What need for me to tell over the cities, distinguished for their territories and walls which prosperous Spain thrusts forth between two seas; where Betis⁶ swells the Atlantic, Hiberus⁷ the Tuscan sea—Spain whose compass occupies the wide intervening tract which parts main from main, setting its bounds at the extreme verge of the world? If thou, O famous master, wert minded to describe the region where thou dwellest, wouldst thou be content to leave unnamed cheerful Bordeaux preferring to write of the pitchy Boii⁸? And when thou bestowest thy leisure on the hot springs of Maroialum⁹ and permittest thyself to live amid shady groves, dwelling amid cheerful scenery and habitations marvellously built, dost thou inhabit murky hovels and cabins of twisted straw amid a wilderness fit for the skin-clad natives of Bigorre? Dost thou, a consul, scorn the proud walls of thine own Rome while not disdaining Bazas amid its sand hills? Or because the fertile country and green fields of Poiteau are about thee, shall I lament that the Ausonian consulate—alas!—has sunk to the level of Raraunum,¹⁰ and that the official robe grows shabby in some mouldering shrine; whereas in fact it hangs in the renowned city of Roman Quirinus along with the imperial palm-broidered robes, trophies of like distinction, there gleaming, long venerable, with unfrayed gold, keeping fresh the glorious bloom of thy deathless achievement? Or when thou art lodged under the roof of Lucanus,¹¹ thy country house, inhabiting a pile vying with the halls of Rome, shall we take the pretext afforded by the place which gives its name to the vicinity, saying thou dwellest in the hamlet of Condate¹²?

Let much admit of jests, let sportive fiction also be allowed; but with a smooth tongue to strike against an aching tooth, to sport with stinging compliments, and to season jests ill-relished with the vinegar of tart satire, oft befits a poet, never a father. For loyalty and natural affection demand that what slander-spinning Rumour instils into guileless ears, that the good-hoping mind of a father should not suffer to take hold and gain firm lodgment in the heart. Even the common herd, malignant in its brutal sneers towards habits formerly observed, does not always hold it crime to alter one’s life: for to alter wisely is accounted praise. When thou hearest I am changed, ask what is my pursuit and my business. If ’tis a change from right to wrong, from godliness to wickedness, from temperance to luxury, from honour to baseness, if I live slothful, sluggish, ignoble, take pity on a comrade strayed into evil; a gentle father well may be stirred with anger to restore a fallen friend to right living and by stern reproof to bring him back to better things.

But if perchance thou dost likewise hear—and ’tis what I have chosen and what I pursue—that I have vowed my heart to our holy God, following in accord with obedient belief the awful behest of Christ, and that I am convinced by God’s word that deathless rewards are laid up for man, purchased by present loss, that, methinks, has not so displeased my revered father that he thinks it a perversion of the mind so to live for Christ as Christ appointed. This is my delight, and this “perversion” I regret not. That I am foolish in the eyes of those who follow other aims gives me no pause, if only in sight of the eternal King my opinion be wise. A short-lived thing is man at best, man with his frail body and passing season, dust and a shadow without Christ: his praise and blame are so much worth as the arbiter himself. Himself he perishes and his own mistake must bear him company, and with the judge who pronounced it a verdict dies and passes.

And unless, while this present time is granted, we take careful heed to live according to the command of Christ our Lord, too late, when man has put off his mortal frame, will be his complaint that while he feared the light rebuke of human tongues, he feared not the severe wrath of the Heavenly Judge. And that He sitteth on the throne at the right hand of the eternal Father, that He is set over all as king, and that as years roll away He will come to try all races with even-balanced judgment, and bestow due rewards upon their several deeds, I for my part believe, and, fearing, toil with restless zeal that, if so it may be, I be not cut off by death ere I am cut off from sin.

Against His coming my believing heart trembles with fluttering strings and my soul, even now aware of what shall be, quakes with foreboding lest, shackled with paltry cares for the body and weighted with a load of business, if perchance the awful trump should peal from the opened heaven, it should fail to raise itself on light pinions into the air to meet the Lord,¹³ flitting in Heaven amid glorified thousands of the saints, who through the void up to the stars on high shall with unlaborious effort uplift light feet, unshackled with the world’s fetters, and wafted on soft clouds shall pass amid the stars to worship the Heavenly King in mid-air and join their glorious companies with Christ whom they adore.

This is my fear, this my task, that the Last Day overtake me not asleep in the black darkness of profitless pursuits, spending wasted time amid empty cares. For what shall I do if, while I drowse amid sluggish hopes, Christ, disclosed to me from his heavenly citadel, should flash forth, and I, dazzled by the sudden beams of my Lord coming from opened Heaven, should seek the doleful refuge of murky night, confounded by the o’erwhelming light?

Wherefore, that neither doubt of the truth, nor love of this present life with delight in worldly things and anxious toil should bring this on me, I am resolved to forestall calamity by my plan of life, to end anxieties while life remains, awaiting with untroubled heart fierce Death, the general doom of things for ages yet to come.

If this thou dost approve, rejoice in thy friend’s rich hope: if otherwise, leave me to be approved by Christ alone.

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