The Golden Legend.

THE old Legenda Aurea, or Golden Legend, was originally written in Latin, in the thirteenth century, by Jacobus de Voragine, a Dominican friar, who afterwards became Archbishop of Genoa, and died in 1292.

He called his book simply Legends of the Saints." The epithet of Golden was given it by his admirers; for, as Wynkin de Worde says, "Like as passeth gold in value all other metals, so this legend exceedeth all other books." But Edward Leigh, in much distress of mind, calls it "a book written by a man of a leaden heart for the basenesse of the errours, that are without wit or reason, and of a brazen forehead, for his impu dent boldnesse in reporting things so fabulous and incredible."

This work, the great text-book of the legendary lore of the Middle Ages, was translated into French in the fourteenth century by Jean de Vigney, and in the fifteenth into English by William Caxton. It has lately been made more accessible by a new French translation: La Légende Dorée, traduite du Latin, par M. G. B. Paris, 1950. There is a copy of the original, with the Gesta Longobadorum appended, in the Harvard College Library, Cambridge, printed at Strasburg, 1496. The title-page is wanting; and the volume begins with the Tabula Legendorum.

I have called this poem the Golden Legend, because the story upon which it is founded seems to me to surpass all other legends in beauty and significance. It exhibits, amid the corruptions of the Middle Ages, the virtue of disinterestedness and self-sacrifice, and the power of Faith, Hope, and Charity, sufficient for all the exigencies of life and death. The story is told, and perhaps invented, by Hartmann von der Aue, a Minnesinger of the twelfth century. The original may be found in Mailath's Altdeutsche Gedichte, with a modern German version. There is another in Marbach's Volksbucher, No. 32.

PROLOGUE.

The Spire of Strasburg Cathedral. Night and storm. LUCIFER, with the Powers of the Air, trying to tear down the Cross.

The Bells.

Excito lentos!
Dissipo ventos!

Paco cruentos!

Lucifer. Baffled! baffled!
Inefficient,

Craven spirits! leave this labour
Unto Time, the great Destroyer!
Come away, ere night is gone!
Voices. Onward! onward!
With the night-wind,

Over field and farm and forest,
Lonely homestead, darksome hamlet,
Blighting all we breathe upon!

[They sweep away. Organ and Gregorian Chant.]

Choir.

Nocte surgentes
Vigilemus omnes'

I.

The Castle of Vautsberg on the Rhine. A chamber in a lower. PRINCE HENRY, sitting alone, ill and restless. Midnight.

Prince Henry. I cannot sleep! my fervid brain,

Calls up the vanished Past again,

And throws its misty splendours deep

Into the pallid realms of sleep!

A breath from that far-distant shore
Comes freshening ever more and more,
And wafts o'er intervening seas
Sweet odours from the Hesperides!
A wind, that through the corridor
Just stirs the curtain, and no more,
And, touching the Æolian strings,
Faints with the burden that it brings!
Come back! ye friendships long departed!
That like o'erflowing streamlets started,
And now are dwindled, one by one,

To stony channels in the sun!

Come back! ye friends, whose lives are ended,

Come back, with all that light attended,

Which seemed to darken and decay

When ye arose and went away!

They come, the shapes of joy and woe,
The airy crowds of long-ago,

The dreams and fancies known of yore,
That have been, and shall be no more.
They change the cloisters of the night
Into a garden of delight;

They make the dark and dreary hours
Open and blossom into flowers!
I would not sleep! I love to be
Again in their fair company;
But ere my lips can bid them stay,
They pass and vanish quite away!
Alas! our memories may retrace
Each circumstance of time and place,
Season and scene come back again,
And outward things unchanged remain;
The rest we cannot reinstate;
Ourselves we cannot re-create,
Nor set our souls to the same key
Of the remembered harmony!

Rest! rest! Oh, give me rest and peace!
The thought of life that ne'er shall cease
Has something in it like despair,
A weight I am too weak to bear!
Sweeter to this afflicted breast
The thought of never-ending rest!
Sweeter the undisturbed and deep
Tranquillity of endless sleep!

[A flash of lightning, out of which LUCIFER appears, in the garb of a travelling

Physician.]

I found your study door unlocked,
And thought you answered when I knocked.
Prince Henry. I did not hear you.
Lucifer.

You heard the thunder;

It was loud enough to waken the dead.
And it is not a matter of special wonder
That, when God is walking overhead,

You should not hear my feeble tread.

Prince Henry. What may your wish or purpose be?
Lucifer. Nothing or everything, as it pleases

Your Highness. You behold in me

Lucifer.

Can

you bring

Yes; very nearly.

And what is a wiser and better thing,
Can keep the living from ever needing
Such an unnatural, strange proceeding,
By showing conclusively and clearly
That death is a stupid blunder merely,
And not a necessity of our lives.
My being here is accidental;

The storm, that against your casement drives,
In the little village below waylaid me.

And there I heard, with a secret delight,

Of your maladies, physical and mental,
Which neither astonished nor dismayed me.
And I hastened hither, though late in the night,
To proffer my aid!

Prince Henry (ironically). For this you came!
Ah, how can I ever hope to requite

This honour from one so erudite?

Lucifer. The honour is mine, or will be when

I have cured your disease.

Prince Henry.

Lucifer. What is

Prince Henry.

But not till then.

your illness?

It has no name.

A smouldering, dull, perpetual flame,
As in a kiln, burns in my veins,

Sending up vapours to the head;

My heart has become a dull lagoon,

Which a kind of leprosy drinks and drains;
I am accounted as one who is dead,
And, indeed, I think I shall be soon.

The dead are dead,

Lucifer. And has Gordonius, the Divine,
In his famous Lily of Medicine,-
I see the book lies open before you,—
No remedy potent enough to restore you?
Prince Henry. None whatever!
Lucifer.
And their oracles dumb, when questioned
Of the new diseases that human life
Evolves in its progress, rank and rife.
Consult the dead upon things that were,
But the living only on things that are.
Have you done this, by the appliance
And aid of doctors?