Poem on the Praises of the Lord

Who complains of being aided by the late gift of virtue?

Who complains that the promises of God advance with slow step?

Who measures the urn of the eternal Judge by human limits, and thinks it slow that the ages must hasten the day which shall render rewards to the deserving?

Noble glory bears witness by a mighty deed.

For where the sluggish Arar glides with stagnant current along its banks, and for long scarce unwinds its lazy stream, where the Haeduan youth, brothers to the Rhine, is born.

I recall a marriage of supreme piety and faithfulness:

yet the divine law heaped up the merit of their love.

And the vow of both was to precede the other in death, and to entrust to pious grief the care of burial:

but the page of the decree chose the wife first.

Then the anxious husband orders, with generous mouth, that the stones which after death become the guest-home of the limbs be hollowed out:

Thou shalt receive me when I come, and join our eternal covenant;

so that those whom, while living, the same bed had held, after the commandments of God, a common tomb might raise.

The wife, foreknowing, felt the vows of her husband, and wrought great miracles in those chaste times.

For when the arms are joined to the dead limbs, and the repeated hand binds the bonds again to the trunk, lest to those for whom the duties of human life are fulfilled there should befall a shapeless floating of the separated parts.

Wondrous to tell, at the time when life was ended, the husband was to be joined to his companion in the place already foreseen.

After the door of death was opened by the husband's dying, and the unwelcome light now revealed the dreadful home:

the woman was found stretching forth her left palm, inviting her companion with the gesture of living love.

Who gave feeling to the tomb?

Who loosed the bonds?

Whence does she who is buried see the shade of her coming spouse?

Thou doest these things, thou Christ God, thy signs are moved, and thou teachest little by little that sleeping limbs rise again:

Thou whom the holy prophets sang as one to come, uncorrupted offspring of God, and ruler of the ruling one, without whom the mighty Father deliberates nothing great.

At whose command the sea stood within its fixed shores, nor is it permitted to the waters to run out over the lands, and the level shores enclose the mountain-waves:

Who hast endowed the stable earth with varied gift for our uses, generous in fatherly piety.

Under thy guidance, mortals commit seeds to the furrows, and a new birth springs from the parched turf.

Thou commandest the vines to flow with a second nectar:

Thou the juices pleasing to the feasts of men and healing to their health from the trees:

thou dost press forth sweet honey.

Thou commandest every kind of living creature to serve man, and moreover the groves to bend with heavy fruits, and new produce to be born from no seed.

Thou commandest the various rivers to profit our labour, and to renew the age blessed by sacred fountains.

Under thy guidance the seas were opened to sail-winged prows, and the sailor traversed ports divided by straits.

Thou, after the elements were set in their fixed forms, lest the heavenly frame should begin to grow sluggish with a rude aspect, didst mark the world with varied gift:

and whatsoever shines in the sky, thy right hand fashioned.

With these signs it pleased thee to adorn the hall of the Lord.

Now lest the seas should be driven inhospitable with no lands, and the eager sailor should count an unceasing harbour:

an island is fixed sufficiently often in the swelling deep;

yet it fears not, surrounded by the raging wave, and resting on its small circle it resists the straits, trusting in thy guidance;

whose venerable covenant, bound by equal law, pervades the highest and the lowest, and suffers not those set within it to transgress their bounds in any direction.

And lest the land should lie too flat or bare, thou didst command hills fit for vines to rise up great, and broad groves to weave their shade.

Then lest a vast horror should move through torpid forests, thou addest innumerable offspring to the tall woodland glades:

that neither the dweller in the grove be lacking, nor prey to the hunter.

Then many birds, then a thousand swarms of voices to resound with mortal harmony through the melodious groves:

thus it pleased thee to weave the year with varied forms, and with pleasant change to add fruit to mortals:

lest an overlong day should too greatly scorch the world, or a brief one snatch away the fire, hateful to those being born.

And lest unceasing toil should shake all things with perpetual effort, the dewy night gives rest to the weary cares of men:

and that human health might lead a secure age, healing herbs rise of their own accord from the turf.

The Father himself sows these by his nod, rich without a ploughshare.

Not if my vitals were covered with an iron wall, and I had an iron voice and a thousand tongues in my singing, could I traverse all the gifts of your piety.

But that Father of thine, placed in his secret seat, easy of sight to none, and terrible to all, sent thee as Lord to the earth and master of life.

And whosoever venerates the Son with just honour, let him dedicate his vows and his everlasting life to both.

Thou, steadfast in chastity and righteousness, and ready to bend the laws after sin, if headlong folly has driven any one away from the prescribed limit of life with you.

Thy Father, that our faces might endure to behold thee, clothed thee in human form and mortal limbs.

For who would dare to raise his feeble eyes, if he had willed to set before trembling lands such as thou art, when with thy mighty right hand thou hurlest thunderbolts, and commandest the present punishment to be feared when directed:

or when, appeased, thou dividest rains over thirsty fields, and bringest forth the uncertain ears of grain in the furrows?

Yet lest nothing should reveal thine illustrious birth, thou art conceived of a virgin:

it does not suffice that she be chaste, nor one who, being married, could join a brother to the Lord, lest foul contagion should be far absent from the womb.

Soon when with advancing course the happy age ripened, thou dost undertake to keep untaught minds in the paternal precepts, and offerest the right way to those who stumble.

And that the commandments sent from God might be thoroughly manifest, thou takest away dominion from death, and with disease dissolved thou commandest the despairing to take up the duties of life, and thou restorest the day to the blind:

and lest anything bold should remain entirely, which faithless error might traverse, thou revealest sense to tombs, and commandest limbs long since laid away to rise again into the upper air, and the beloved bodies acknowledge their own name.

But after the fit follower had drunk in the law, that the heavenly spirit might strip itself of the mortal hall, intent on the law by which thou mightest teach all things to be endured for the sake of the highest God, and that each man rightly assume for himself everlasting life by contempt of death:

thus bearing the completed commands of the Father, thou didst return to the secrets of the highest heaven, where the bright aether forbids the sluggish clouds to kindle in its own sky.

And that there might be a sure abundance of the perishing multitude, which shuts out the commandments of God with pitiable ears, and that new laws might not now hold those long since dead:

the dreadful things of the infernal prison, free for us, thou commandest an innumerable people to emerge from the darkness, with only those shut in whom an impious life has marked:

and thou dividest the places of punishment for the shades to come, who believe not in thee, or who feign that they believe.

Holy God, and venerable pledge of the highest God, at whose name, driven out by violent death, having seized their own breasts and the breasts of others, souls cry out and grow pale and depart at thy command, as many miracles wrought before concerning thee declare, when they are held suspended between earth and heaven, because through thee nothing is permitted to the bound enemy.

But now do thou make ready for me Constantine, victorious and joyful, the Lord in merits, the Father in piety, easy in command, master in the rule of living, and equal to the edicts which the law established for thee sanctions:

of this offspring, better than him thou hast given nothing to the earth before, nor shalt thou give:

would that his children might equal their father!