The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Saint Jerome, after his earlier sojourn in the desert of Chalcis and the Holy Land, made abode at Rome, where many enemies waged war against him by reason of the zeal with which he denounced abuses. Notwithstanding, Pope Damasus honoured him, and made him the spiritual director of certain noble Roman ladies, especially Marcella, who had changed her palace into a convent, Paula a young widow, her daughters Eustochium and Blesilla, and others who ennobled yet more the greatest families of ancient Rome by heroic exercise of the Christian virtues. The Saint had written to Eustochium, then a young girl, his celebrated letter concerning Christian Perfection. In return the Girl sent to him three lines and three presents.

A man so great to one so slight, so small!
Mother! this letter 'twixt my hands high held—
I dreamed of it all night; I dreamed a star
Shone ever on the scroll—this precious letter

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Is full of wisdom as the spring of flowers;
Full as your eyes are full of beams and tears
At times, upon me gazing; as your lips
Are full of sweetness closing upon mine.
How gently bends this seer to teach a child!
I grow to something better. Once I wept
When from the Catacombs they fetched triumphant
Some new-found vial red with Martyr's blood:
This day I fain would share such death! What wonder?
Ere speech was mine you vowed for me a vow
That never sin should stain that chrisom-robe
Which pledged your babe to Christ. Maidens each night
Wear garb as white!—you see how glitters mine
Touched by the rising sun. The vow you made
Each morning I renew. That anchoret grave
Was bound by sterner rule.
His hair is grey;
His forehead seamed and weather-worn; his hand
Rough as that desert's tawniest tract; and yet
How tenderly it writes! ‘She sold her gems;
To the poor she gave their price. Her festal robes
She changed for cloak of penitential brown:
One narrow cell to her was paradise:
At night she glided to the Martyrs' tombs;
There knelt in prayer till morning. In that mien
Severity was blithesome, blithesomeness
A thing severe. How tender was that face!
Its paleness meant detachment from this world,
Converse with heaven. Her speech was soft as silence:
Her silence sweet as music.’ Thus he ends:
‘Let her not see this letter: praise disturbs her!
Show it to Pagans.’
Sternly he writes of these:

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‘Shun thou those Pagan maids who, serpent-like,
Shoot out from creviced chinks of rock a crest
That shines but to betray; and shun not less
Those worldlings that usurp the Christian name
Yet, Pagans still at heart, stretch fearless forth
A full-fed, gem-lit, sacrilegious hand
Even to the sacred chalice! Shun those widows
Shrill-voiced because some Consul of their kin
Rode up three centuries since to the Capitol
Dragged by the snow-white steeds. Predestinate race!
That golden-gated Capitol is void!
Trembles the seven-hilled city! Suppliant throngs
Rush on by vacant temples of the gods,
Rush to the Martyrs' graves.’
Forgive me, mother!
Back blew the casement, and rose-scented airs
Ruffled the pages. Thus once more he writes:
‘Forget thy kinsfolk and thy Father's house,
And live in Christ reborn! The bridal Rite
Is venerable, holy the marriage bed;
But high above the level of things good
Things better rise—things best. In olden time
Command went forth, “Behold, a man shall leave
Father and mother, cleaving to his wife;”
But lo! a lordlier challenge greets us now:
“Soul by God's Hand created unto God
For His sake count as dross all lesser things
So shall the King have pleasure in thy beauty.”
Unworthy art thou? Such unworthiness
Is worth with God. He, choosing from all lands,
Elects the Ethiopian, bids her sing,
“Dark am I, dark yet fair.”’
Mother, methinks
I scarce had liked that praise of convent life

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Save that he speaks with reverence too of marriage:
The life of nuns must be a kind of marriage,
Marriage to One unseen.
He writes once more:
‘In the old time blest was he whose field was rich,
Whose flocks were large; the poor are blessed this day:
Blessed of old who laughed; to-day who weep:
Blessed of old the man whom all men praised;
Blessed this day who walks despised by all:
Blessed of old the man who stood secure
Palm-like beside still waters; blessed now
The Runner in God's race. In ancient time
Blessed that Hebrew maiden changed to wife;
Her babe might prove the Christ. Now Christ is come:
In sorrow Eve brough forth: Mary in joy:
Virginity brought forth not death but life,
The Lord of Life, and won thenceforth for Woman
The restful hymeneals of the skies.
Our loves are loftier than of old, our wars
Sublimer; not with flesh and blood we strive,
But Princes of the Darkness of this world:
God calls thee, not to heights, but to the highest:
Preserve God's sanctuary. The Ark of old
Held these two things, the Tables of the Law;
Held these and naught besides.’
Mother, my Mother!
How dear to this high Teacher she had been,
That Girl, the glory of Rome's earlier day,
Virginia! Ofttimes I have seen her face
Clearly as now yon apple-tree dew-bright!
O chaste as all the Vestals, with what joy
She met her father's knife! Unstained, untouched,
She reached the mansions of the holy Dead
That flocked to her as doves to haunts well known.

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Christians there lived that never heard of Christ,
Baptized perhaps by Powers unseen! Our Master
Writes sternly: ‘Touch not thou a Pagan book:
Stand not anear it, lest a demon leap
Forth from gilt page, and light upon thy heart:
For their sake penance nigh to death was mine.’
Mother, where sweetness is must needs be goodness:
All other Pagan legends may be false;
That Maid's I know is true!
Our Master spurned
Not Pagan books alone; he left, he fled
The lands they boast. ‘Hail, holy Waste,’ he writes,
‘Bare, yet enamelled with the flowers of Christ!
Hail, Solitude immeasurable! to thee
We fly, not shunning aught but seeking all:
Thy Face we seek, Thou conqueror who o'ercam'st
The Tempter in the desert! Worldly toys
Here rise not 'twixt our spirits, Lord, and Thee:
We see Thee tread Thy loved Judean fields
Helping the sick, the blind; and hear Thy voice,
These words, “Her sins, though many, are forgiven,”
Or those of kindred tone, “Lazarus, arise!”
Far off we ken the City of Thy Saints
And gates of sunset gold.’ Yet through that waste
Portents there roamed which shook our Master's spirit, soul,
Temptations we can guess not, spared, no doubt,
To ill-resisting weakness. Burning sands
Drank up those flaming suns and sent their glow
On through his body and soul. Whole days, whole nights
He beat his breast at some cold cavern's mouth,
Fled thence to deserts lonelier. Lion and pard,
Or demon-foes imaged in dreadful shapes,

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I trembled here too much to understand,
Passed him fire-eyed. Benigner visions soon
Healed his tired being with assuaging light,
Memories, it may be, of yon Alban hills
Or choirs dance-woven of Rome's young, fair maids;
And when that storm had left him angels sang,
‘We follow where thou goest.’
Mother beloved!
I should not read you more. You kept, last night,
Long vigil: leaning now 'gainst yonder stone
Your head, your eyes alternate flash and close;
And sometimes ere the smile has left your lips
A momentary sleep sits on your lids.
Hear but one passage more: ‘Humility
Learn from humiliations; these are sent
To spare us degradations ours through pride:
Be humble thou; yet boast not humbleness:
Be ignorant rather than, through knowledge, vain.
Then when the trial finds thee, as a seal
Let Christ be on thy heart and on thine arm;
Walk on: fear naught: pure foot shall tread secure
Adder and serpent's crest.’ Again he writes:
‘What! Wouldst thou tread the lilies only? Nay,
But paths empurpled by the Feet divine,
And daily ways of death.’

I think—I doubt not—
Our stern, rough Teacher had a sister once!
He knows that praise, though undeserved, alas!
Helps girls to merit praise. Again he writes,
‘Give thyself wholly to the Lord of all:
Wholly for thee He died. What wife would couch
On silks while bleeding lies her warrior Lord
On snows far distant? Shun the festal haunts:
The Spouse of souls is near thee: seek Him not

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In crowded ways. The watchers of the night
Will meet thee there, and rend from thee thy veil:
Pray thou within: He stands without and knocks:
Then when thou hear'st “My sister and my spouse,”
Fling wide thy door, or soon thy song shall be,
“I opened: He had passed! Yea, lightning-like
He passeth; and His footsteps are not known.”’

Thus he concludes: ‘The Mother of thy God
Make still thy pattern; in thy heart of hearts
Thus shall her Babe be born. She, she alone,
The Inviolate One, was fruitful in herself,
Parent—sole parent—of Incarnate God,
In this an image of the Eternal Sire
Parent, sole Parent of the Eternal Son.
The stem is she from Jesse; He the flower
That, burgeoning from that stem, satiates with sweet
Both heaven and earth. The soul that inly loves her
Should be God's night-bird singing all night long
With bleeding beak the Passion of her Son.
What are the voices of the earth beside?
Wouldst hear His Voice? Be wise in sacred lore:
Read well God's Book, to noble hearts how dear!
It is God's Eden: yea, He walks therein
In the coolness of the day. What find we there?
The record of the Making of all worlds;
The record of Deliverance for His People;
The record of the giving of His Law
On Sinai amid thunders: after these
Soarings of regal or of priestly psalm,
Next, warnings of sad seers from Carmel's steeps,
Or moanings of that far, prophetic sea
Wide as man's heart, that, heaved by breath divine,
Yearns round the bases of the Mount of God
With groans unutterable. Later came

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That second Tome—the Four Evangelists:
There lives, fire-breathing like the stars of God,
There lives that vision of the Creatures Four
Seen by Ezekiel! Full of wings and eyes,
Man-faced yet lion-faced and eagle-faced,
Forward they rush yoked to a fiery car;
Forward they rush where'er the Spirit wills;
Yea, for the self-same Spirit is in those wheels.
Throned in that car, above God's hills for ever
On sweeps the Son of Man.’

O mother mine!
I read, unweeting how the moments passed,
And louder read as yonder garden choir
That first but piped, each bird a note, then slept,
Rewakening shook the blossoming boughs, as though
God loved no praise but theirs! The ascended sun
Shoots o'er the pavement now a longer beam,
A warmth how grateful, for the unsandalled foot
Chills soon upon these marbles. Why, O why
Hate men our Master? Fierce in fight they call him:
Methinks there might be wars with mildness blent;
They say that turtles fight, and yet, one dead,
Its little mate heart-stricken dies of grief.
What know I? Mother, you have heard his letter:
Needs must I write my thanks upon my knees?
And yet not thus: my tears might blot the page;
And ‘keep,’ he said, ‘in youth thy tears for God:
Drop them in age for man—less dangerous then.’
I must write gaily lest my scroll prove irksome:
I must write briefly for he ends, ‘Few words!
Mine hours with tasks are laden.’
Hark that chime
Rolled from St. Peter's! 'Tis Saint Peter's Day!
Listen! Again that rush of countless feet!

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All Rome makes speed to greet her great Apostle!
Hasten we, too:—my letter first: 'tis writ!
Irené, take these tablets to my Master:
These lines—there are but three—may win his smile:
Likewise these presents three; the Armillœ first,
War-bracelets clasping none but conquering arms:
Doubtless some warrior of our house, long dead,
Won them by merit. Heavier blows by far
This athlete of God's Church hath dealt her foes,
Too fiercely dealt them Roman priests aver;
But then they fear his haughty strength and looks
Still heated from the desert. Give him next
These two young doves so loving and so mild;
And, last, this basket heaped with early cherries.
The hour he sat here first I gave him such!
Three years have passed since then. Smiling he spake
‘The gift is meet: cherries, like little maids,
Are fresh and pure; a blushful gleam without;
Hard heart within.’ I think he will remember!

University of Virginia Library

EUSTOCHIUM, OR SAINT JEROME'S LETTER.

(A.D. 382.)

ARGUMENT.