Bridging the Continental divide: neo-Latin and its cultural role in Jacobean Scotland, as seen in the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum (1637)

  [p201]

A poem on the day of Jesus Christ's birth

1Come now, you who see that the pure fires of the turning heavens spread out their light through the vast universe and that they mark the universe's changing order: now you see clearly that a generous God controls the bright stars by his will, and that he manages the fields below. And when that annual constellation brings again to our mind the god born of a pure virgin, may you know with what duty and how much good-will that God granted salvation to the human race, and with what a hand of friendship he generously gave for your employment all that he made. He ordered that fires light up in fixed laws the fiery walls of glittering heaven for you, and the gleaming globes of the vast firmament which are immune to decay, and their eternal courses under his control alone; and by turns that they cover their faces with the dark dusk from the dark shadow of the covered earth. For you he has distributed the fertile life-giving seeds of the universe in their proper places: he makes the flames without weight travel beneath the stars, for golden Phoebe to envelop them after clasping them to her snowy bosom, and to seize them in a swift orbit around her globe. And he set thin breezes of air under these, and he spread out the light air through the empty space of the upper atmosphere, and then the seas were poured out in its vast depths to spread over the solid earth in a billowed torrent, after he had already struck it downwards with his own force, and he would have rounded it into a sphere covering the earth, except his love for the human race demanded that the mountains rise up towards the heights, and the steep sides of the highest mountains menace far and wide with their overhanging ridge, that the low-lying valleys sink down, that the sea be checked by chasms, and that it strike the shores in predetermined boundaries.

31 Then the earth was ordered to furnish gifts for its own inhabitants, so that human employment may seek out each possible thing, and supply them with the rich crop and the great profit of the universe,   [p202] and by eternal law produce offspring. No less were the waters, which embrace the surrounded land, ordered to distribute the scaly race throughout the watery kingdoms, and now, with its deep piled up upon itself, to withdraw its waves little by little from the empty sands, and now, spread out along the wide bay, and with sea walls smashed far and wide, to strike its own shores with mighty wave, while the new Moon dons a waning front without light, or fixes her crown with a slender flame, and with her crescent again having given way to a full globe, she looks down upon the silent earth with her shining face. And the clouds, gathered together in the atmosphere by Phoebus' flames, were now ordered to strike down upon the forests' foliage with hailstones, and to cover the high mountains with a snowy fleece, then also to shower with their light moisture the fields thirsting for a rainy downpour, and to overwhelm those fields which are hardened with harsh soil, and flowing into dry ashes. From this source does fertile Ceres cover herself in flower for our enjoyment, and may she turn yellow with plump ears of corn, from this source may her fragrant stalk rise up under the warming atmosphere, may the forest be covered with her green leaves, may fruitful vine abound in swollen grapes, and may the cattle graze upon new pastures in fields of golden hay.

57 But moreover the father, who turns the stars by his divine will, has divided himself for the many uses of man, for whom it has been granted to draw down the divine breath of his pure mind from heaven, and the origin of nourishing light, whom God dignified with the living image of his own form, so that he may pass his time in emulation of the great Gods, in the manner of an eternal child; and also so that he can in the end reach his home in the sky, and occupy heaven. Therefore, after he has surveyed the earth from heaven with his eyes, he now sees that the grief-bringing plague of wickedness rages far and wide, and though the human race is surrounded by the danger of a well-earned death, he pities them, and moreover he is about to bear to those almost overwhelmed by the weight of predicted troubles his promised help. So that he may lift up the utterly fallen, and lead them safe from the Stygian waves, he has sent into the world his only begotten son,   [p203] and has decreed that he himself adopt the mortal limbs of our bodies, and fill up a virgin bosom with his mysterious load not from the seed of man, to come to know the changing fortunes of passing age, and be held in nature's fleeting embrace; and to entrust himself to the wretched earth, so that he can make God known to all, hold off the universe from ruin, and can, as victor, destroy Avernus and subjugate it by his death, and compose man in his home amid the stars.

81 Now, having counted out its own years, the time had arrived which was foretold by the oracles of so many old prophets, time which divine wisdom determined for itself, and in which it resolved itself many times to restore promised salvation to man, and to clothe itself in a human shape. Thereupon a messenger, sent from the empyrean ether, reveals the long hoped-for secret of the fates, that a divinity, born of a sacred divinity, is to be delivered to earth, he announces to a woman that she has been chosen and will be a mother free from tainted sin, so that her womb would be blessed with a divine load: and that God, the only hope of our salvation, having been poured in, would direct the mortal seeds of his own transient life. Therefore, in equal measure the virgin received God in her mind and in her womb: blessed in her mind, very blessed in her womb. So through three trimesters she bears God and man - and no sickness wearies the chaste mother.

97 Undefiled peace was nourishing the Roman world, and now two-faced Janus has closed his bronze doors, a and in universal prayer the return to earth of harmony, peace, and salvation is sought, and they are cultivated and worshipped with images, so that more happily would the earth receive the founder of eternal peace, and the guarantor of salvation in its outstretched arms. Meanwhile, as Capricorn, who marks the separation of autumn and cold midwinter, and is rolled out amid long shadows, stretches out Phoebus in his return across the sky, and the calm quiet of the falling year levels the winds, as the kingfisher makes its home, and a tranquillity levels the sea; while the tribe of Isaac's offspring prepare to be counted and valued in accordance with Caesar's decree (through which custom the native stock of tribe and race would appropriate each person), the most chaste virgin, with her womb nourishing her load,   [p204] withdrew with her husband to their native city of Bethlehem, which is distinguished by the noble stock of Great Kings, blessed with a nascent God, and upon which the celebrated glory of such a great birth bestowed divine honour, and above heaven shone forth with a prophetic star.

117 She is not received here by the hospitality of the nobles, nor with a sumptuous dinner; no house has welcomed the poor woman. In the hinterland a cavern looms over the city, rough crags hang upon it, a shady comfort in midsummer, and offering a roof for poor farmers in the night. To this place she goes as day falls, here is the night, most pleasing to heaven, and most fortunate for man, passed under its happy shadows. The narrow cave surrounded both God and cattle with a common hospitality, and the stars beam in the deep darkness. Here are no traces of luxury, no downy quilt covers a soft bed; and the bed is not wrought in any decorative art. Here one lies down upon cheap hay: straw provides fire; and the rock provides fresh water.

130 Now dark night marks out its own shadows, and a deep silence has pressed upon the glimmering earth: after the virgin and parent, who was worthy of a union with God, delivered into the breathing regions of light her sacred deposit and the developed burden of her load (with neither exertion nor shame's blows, and with the entrance to her womb unmolested), and the chaste parent, having given birth to God, who is master of both heaven and the seasons, gave over her own divinity to the stars, thereupon the creator of the universe understood that he was born - the labour all his own - that he is the long-hoped-for salvation for mortal ills, who would pay the price with his own blood for our crimes, who would eradicate the crimes filled with the triumphs of the Eumenides, and who would divert His father's anger from the guilty world and once again wash away our sin. The divine parent, having experienced no mothers' pains (but not spared childbirth) solicitous of her divine son, wraps him in swaddling clothes and he is constrained within the unfair limits of space - he whom neither the greatest expanse of the firmament contains, nor whatever Nature confines in her ample bosom; he who governs all above and below, which he created with his vast, unconquered, and propitious virtue,   [p205] is now held in a narrow manger, and lies down on straw. A cradle decorated with purple covers does not induce his sleep; nor is there a mattress stuffed with soft feathers. These things are the worldly accompaniments of human excess, which debased lust stores up for itself through the vanity of the petty, as does the glorious hunt for unprofitable wealth.

157 There is a greater glory in the birth of God: his golden splendour lights up the cave, and the darkness grows bright with an unfamiliar light. The assembly and the happy race of the heaven, wonder at the mother and the baby's gentle shouts and first cries. The animals, thunderstruck and taken aback, recognise their lord and God, and the stars shine back with brighter flames. Now Astraea, making ready her return to earth, summons her sisters, and very gently lays aside her ancient anger. The heavenly chorus above sing in joyful hymn, and it celebrates for earth as it exults in heaven. Also it heralds a nourishing peace for the man whose mind knows no crooked deceit, and for whom a wicked disposition does not grow base with any sin. God does not summon forth kings clothed in purple to this event, nor the people snoring in the deep night, nor those to whom the guardianship of the sacred temple had been entrusted: God deems the shepherds on their watch worthy of this honour, and, forewarned, they find God, and worship him in the cave, and amid the divine supplications they also enjoin their praises.

175 Blessed are they for whom that night dawned more brightly than the stars with its new light, and for whom it was permitted to behold the light risen from true light, and the Lord of the heavens received in a stable, and wrapped in swaddling clothes, now weeping for sins, not his own, and filling up the hollow cave with his tender cries. Blessed also is she who, filled with a divinity, was deemed worthy to bear in her womb her God, the father of the universe. She bore no pain and she experienced no loss of her virtue, protected by her own load, whom, embraced very gently in her caressing arms, and crawling on her lap, she now nourishes; and upon him she pours out sweet kisses, and willingly she bestows them with a mother's love.

187 O fortunate kings whom the star from the high ether led into the extraordinary cave with its strange light: as immortals may they gain good graces with their pure mind   [p206] in their offerings and prayers to the king, mystery, and God. Happy the souls who were not allowed to witness it in person and whom pure faith has won over, in them the unadulterated hope of promised salvation resides.

194 Therefore, provide incense for the appointed temples, and mindful of our received salvation we burn worthy sacrifices at the altars with a sacred light: the light that first allowed mortal suffering to expect a day after death in a shared heavenly home. While it is allowed, and our mind has been extracted from the blind darkness and is in control of itself, and just punishment does not stir a God who recalls our guilt, let us pour forth prayers and pious entreaties to those in heaven, and let the day not pass unmarked on earth which was worthy of a divine woman's distinguished labour, as long as the sea shall wander over the earth, and the sky likewise spread widely over the sea, and the stars turn in their fixed course.