Our own English Bible : its translators and their work : the manuscript period . followed the bier, and gazed with loving eyeson the sweet expression and calm beauty of the dreamlessface, which soothed their sorrow. At intervals of sevenmiles, stone crosses were set up, where the large processionrested. Certainly, such a life and such a death afford somejustification for his poem on the might of Christianityin its triumph over the old Paganism, now rapidly passingaway. He cries— Not Mars, the Lord of wounds, who scatters roundThe seeds of war, and fills the rancorous heartWith Gorgon poisons,
Our own English Bible : its translators and their work : the manuscript period . followed the bier, and gazed with loving eyeson the sweet expression and calm beauty of the dreamlessface, which soothed their sorrow. At intervals of sevenmiles, stone crosses were set up, where the large processionrested. Certainly, such a life and such a death afford somejustification for his poem on the might of Christianityin its triumph over the old Paganism, now rapidly passingaway. He cries— Not Mars, the Lord of wounds, who scatters roundThe seeds of war, and fills the rancorous heartWith Gorgon poisons, can assist his fanes;Nor Venus can avail, nor her vile boy;The golden statues of Minerva fools proclaim her goddess of the Arts;Nor he for whom, as ancient fictions sing,The leafy vines their precious branches spread,Can prop the columns nodding with their god;The marbles totter with terrific the vast fabric rushes into dust,Een Neptune sumamed Sovereign of the waves,Who, by his swelling billows, rules the main. * St. Aldhelm, Rev. W. H. Jones, - J ^ S p d 3 !z d l-H O r^ ^ ^ ^ ^ z X 79 ALDHELM 8* He cannot save his sculptured effigies, Whose marble brows the golden leaves surround; Not een Aloides, who the Centaurs crushed, And dared the fiery breath of prowHng Cacus When from his throat his words in flame were poured, Though his right hand the dreadful club may grasp. Can shield his temples when the Christian prays. Aldhelm used rhyme before the Arabs entered Spain,who are supposed to have brought it. Certainly, he wasa scholar for his time, though his style was not what weshould call scholarly to-day. Dr. Parr has given us inour time the battering-ram of political controversies,but Aldhelm preceded him with the bulwarks of theCathohc Faith, shaken by the ballistae of secular argument,and overthrown by the battering - rams of atrociousingenuity. It is possible that there was much more translationdone at this period of which we have no present k
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