Carmina [Ascripta] (Appendix III)

Appendix III. Poems Ascribed to Saint Isidore. Verses which were read in the library of Saint Isidore, bishop of Hispalis, and others ascribed to Saint Isidore. I. Here are many sacred things, here are many worldly things: from these, if any poems please you, read them all. You see meadows full of thorns, and an abundance of flowers. If you do not wish to take the thorns, take the roses. Here twin volumes of venerable writings shine; new things are stored here together with old. II. I am that Origen, once a most true teacher, I was cut off suddenly by a guilty tongue. If you believe it, I strove to store up as many thousands of books as a legion sent to war leads men into arms. No blasphemy ever touched my senses. But I was watchful and prudent, safe from the enemy. Only the words of the *Periarchon* brought ruin upon me, unless impious weapons press upon me, cast down. III. Gaul gave me birth, and Poitiers, with its thundering voice, sent forth Hilary, the teacher, as its own alumnus.

IV. Ambrose, a doctor, distinguished by signs and by hymns, shines here in his titles, shines in his eloquence. V. He lies who claims to have read all of you. Or can any reader possess all your works? For in a thousand volumes, Augustine, you shine. The books themselves bear witness to what I, your own, speak. Although the wisdom of many pleases in their books, if Augustine is present, he alone suffices for you. VI. Jerome, interpreter, most learned in various languages. Bethlehem celebrates you, the whole world resounds with you. Our library also proclaims you through your books. VII. By name John, called Chrysostom for this reason, because a golden work shines from our tongue. Constantinople shines with me as its teacher, and I am celebrated everywhere as a doctor through my books. I have composed works on morals, I have spoken of the battles of virtues, and I have taught wretched sinners to weep for their crimes. VIII. Brighter in eloquence than all, Cyprian, you shine. You were a doctor, now you are a martyr. IX. If Virgil, if Horace, if Ovid, and if Persius horrifies you, if Lucan and Statius harm you, the sweet Prudentius was equal to the excellent in his mouth, that noble one enough in his varied poems.

X. Read through the careful poem of eloquent Avitus. Behold, Juvencus is here, and Sedulius for you. Both equal in tongue, both flourishing in verse, they bring abundant draughts from the evangelical font. Therefore cease to serve the pagan poets, while you can have such great goods—what is Calliope to you? XI. The histories of events and the times of the past age, preserved on parchments, this chest together bears. XII. As much as you shine, Augustine, through your master, Hippo, so much does Rome shine through its prelate Gregory. XIII. You are considered not unequal to the ancient doctors, Leander the seer. Your words teach this. XIV. Here is stored the most ample series of laws, the truthful speech of the forum which rules the people. Our bookcases do not hold painted books. You who desire, behold, read, if your wishes incline you. Put aside sloth here, banish disdain from your mind. Believe me, brother, you will return more learned. Or do you perhaps say: What need have I of these? That I have no time left for study. I have set forth the histories, I have run through all the law. If you truly say this, you yourself now taste nothing.

XV. The masters whom medicine celebrates as renowned throughout the world, this present image marks as painted men. Gifts are for the physician, as long as each one labors. The sick man now rises, no flask arrives. What you owe the physician, pay back, sick man, lest evils return again; no one will run for you again. Let the physician attend to the wealth of the poor man and of the powerful: a different condition is to be held in a different way. If he is rich, let there be a just opportunity for profit; if poor, one reward suffices for you. XVI. Whatever the Arab burns, whatever fragrance the Indian bears, whatever the wave of the Ionian sea carries: cinnamon, myrrh, leaf, and gleaming cassia, balsam, frankincense, calamus, and Corycian crocus—these can belong to the perfume-shops of great kings, and to a house overflowing with immense riches. We lowly enjoy the herbs of the meadows' plants, which humble valleys and high ridges bear. Therefore, sacred mountains of the Hesperides, and fields—for many cares, our gifts are of little worth. Here lie fragrant things, here cinnamon and frankincense breathe, whatever the wealthy Arab and whatever Sabaea bears. While many kinds of ointment are most pleasing, nothing can be more pleasing than the rose, than the violet. The Elinian will yield, the Amaracine will yield to them, and this Cyprian, from whatever region it comes, will yield. Here you see various ointments which Greece sent, and very many we have from the Hesperidian region. We carry pigments from vessels hardened from the fragile dust of earth; we give no cups.

XVII. Whoever knows how to contend with a dead hide using a reed, if it pleases, let him come here; let him wage his own wars. Any wandering scribe in the middle of an hour, suspended, should be struck on the back with two small whips. XVIII. If a scribe knew more how to do what he wishes, twice, thrice, and four times over, it would be necessary, friend. If you are wise, and half-wise, I tell you this: be silent. A scribe does not suffer anyone speaking before him. There is nothing for you to do here, chatterbox; go outside. XIX. Solomon sang this book with wondrous sweetness, which holds the royal muses of the Bridegroom and the Bride, singing the praises of the Church and Christ on this side and that. And it recalls the faithful companions and comrades of the bridal chamber. I ask you, young man, to commit these to your mind by heart. These songs of Song of Songs are far better than those of Maeonides. These sing to you true precepts of eternal life. That one will sound forth false frivolities badly in your ears. Poem on the Eclipse of the Moon. You, leisurely in a grove, produce wandering songs, and among clear waters and musical breezes, you pour Pierian nectar into a liquid mind. But a turbid heap of things obscures us, and iron cares press us in the Henian soldier. Law-crackers thunder, forums bark, war-trumpets disturb. And we are carried across the Ocean far onward, while the snowy Vasco holds sway, and the bristling Cantabrian spares not. These are the ones for whom you indicate that the leafy hair of Phoebus should gird, or that ivy should more augustly shade their locks. These are the ones whom you command to fly flaming through the air. But rather, swift eagles, you see the sluggish elephant.

It will run ahead, and the sluggish tortoise [will delay] the swift [verse], which we, with dewy song, shall pursue the moon. Yet the bent one, striving through the weighty earth, [asks] why the magpie’s circle grows livid with weariness. And why the purple gleam of the snowy face wastes away. Not that, as the people believe, a dread woman howling in blackening caves drags her down from the high-wandering mirror into the infernal shadows, conquered by the song of the goddess, or by the Stygian dew ** and seeking the vincible cry; for through the upper air, where the swiftest boundary separates the turbid from the pure, she moves inviolate; but the vast body of the earth, which holds the middle of the deep pole, while it detains the light of her brother with shadowy bounds, then with the thick star the round shadow of the wheel grows pale, while the swift axle of the mound passes through, and with the dewy mirror she restores her brother’s flames free through the sky. But because you wonder why, when the greatest power of the sun is twenty-two times greater than the earthly orb, it now encircles the earthly limits with light, — [consider] the work of reason that I have approved; for look at Phoebus, how high he goes through the convex golden realms of the world, and how low he illuminates the earth from his high chariot: here, however he pleases, whether he scatters fires from above, or when he has shone with an oblique axle, the rays are broken upon the earth; the other lights of the sun, where the greater part goes forth with radiant shafts, with no obstructing globe, stretch through the vast void, until the conquered shadow completes the pyramid’s peak: through which, when Phoebe drives her moist yoke-fellows, she is strong.

The lowly [moon], sometimes discolored by neighboring shadows, lacks her brother, and bloodless, faints with an empty face. Why the moon alone is despoiled of her light is truly no wonder; for she, needing light, is fostered by another's light, which, when the nearest part of her orbit begrudges it, she, pale blue, awaits the rays of her brother. But the rest of the chorus of stars is not touched by shadows. And all have their own radiance, nor do they blush from the sun. But the clear [sky]... Further, the [moon] is swept beyond the sun with the summit of the sky. Now why she does not always grow pale in a half-monthly orb, the bent [paths] provide by their oblique course. For wandering with fixed error, when the devious [moon] gathers her twisted turns, the sun goes out far from her turning-point, and twists the cloak of night, and shines upon his sister. This same reason holds why the ruddy radiance of the August sun is suddenly broken by shadows, when, needing light, the nourishing body of the moon moves between the earth and the sun, barring her brother with straight interpositions.