Appendix
In spring-tide. Here black firs on lofty peak
Bloom; and the only woods that know no hail
Are green eternally: no foliage falls;
At no time fails the flower. There, too, there blooms
A flower as red as Tarsine purple is:
A rose, I ween, it is (red hue it has,
An odour keen); such aspect on its leaves
It wears, such odour breathes. A tree it stands,
With a new flower, fairest in fruits; a crop
Life-giving, dense, its happy strength does yield.
Rich honies with green cane their fragrance join,
And milk flows potable in runners full;
And with whate’er that sacred earth is green,
It all breathes life; and there Crete’s healing gift
Is sweetly redolent. There, with smooth tide,
Flows in the placid plains a fount: four floods
Thence water parted lands. The garden robed
With flowers, I wot, keeps ever spring; no cold
Of wintry star varies the breeze; and earth,
After her birth-throes, with a kindlier blast
Repairs. Night there is none; the stars maintain
Their darkness; angers, envies, and dire greed
Are absent; and out-shut is fear, and cares
Driven from the threshold. Here the Evil One
Is homeless; he is into worthy courts
Out-gone, nor is’t e’er granted him to touch
The glades forbidden. But here ancient faith
Rests in elect abode; and life here treads,
Joying in an eternal covenant;
And health without a care is gladsome here
In placid tilths, ever to live and be
Ever in light. Here whosoe’er hath lived
Pious, and cultivant of equity
And goodness; who hath feared the thundering God
With mind sincere; with sacred duteousness
Tended his parents; and his other life
Spent ever crimeless; or who hath consoled
With faithful help a friend in indigence;
Succoured the over-toiling needy one,
As orphans’ patron, and the poor man’s aid;
Rescued the innocent, and succoured them
When press with accusation; hath to guests
His ample table’s pledges given; hath done
All things divinely; pious offices
Enjoined; done hurt to none; ne’er coveted
Another’s: such as these, exulting all
In divine praises, and themselves at once
Exhorting, raise their voices to the stars;
Thanksgivings to the Lord in joyous wise
They psalming celebrate; and they shall go
Their harmless way with comrade messengers.
When ended hath the Lord these happy gifts,
And likewise sent away to realms eterne
The just, then comes a pitiable crowd
Wailing its crimes; with parching tears it pours
All groans effusely, and attests in acts
With frequent ululations. At the sight
Of flames, their merit’s due, and stagnant pools
Of fire, wrath’s weapons, they ’gin tremble all.
Them an angelic host, upsnatching them,
Forbids to pray, forbids to pour their cries
(Too late!) with clamour loud: pardon withheld,
Into the lowest bottom they are hurled!
O miserable men! how oft to you
Hath Majesty divine made itself known!
The sounds of heaven ye have heard; have seen
Its lightnings; have experienced its rains
Assiduous; its ires of winds and hail!
How often nights and days serene do make
Your seasons—God’s gifts—fruitful with fair yields!
Roses were vernal; the grain’s summer-tide
Failed not; the autumn variously poured
Its mellow fruits; the rugged winter brake
The olives, icy though they were: ’twas God
Who granted all, nor did His goodness fail.
At God earth trembled; on His voice the deep
Hung, and the rivers trembling fled and left
Sands dry; and every creature everywhere
Confesses God! Ye (miserable men!)
Have heaven’s Lord and earth’s denied; and oft
(Horrible!) have God’s heralds put to flight;
And rather slain the just with slaughter fell;
And, after crime, fraud ever hath in you
Inhered. Ye then shall reap the natural fruit
Of your iniquitous sowing. That God is
Ye know; yet are ye wont to laugh at Him.
Into deep darkness ye shall go of fire
And brimstone; doomed to suffer glowing ires
In torments just. God bids your bones descend
To penalty eternal; go beneath
The ardour of an endless raging hell;
Be urged, a seething mass, through rotant pools
Of flame; and into threatening flame He bids
The elements convert; and all heaven’s fire
Descend in clouds. Then greedy Tartarus
With rapid fire enclosed is; and flame
Is fluctuant within with tempest waves;
And the whole earth her whirling embers blends!
There is a flamy furrow; teeth acute
Are turned to plough it, and for all the years
The fiery torrent will be armed: with force
Tartarean will the conflagrations gnash
Their teeth upon the world. There are they scorched
In seething tide with course precipitate;
Hence flee; thence back are borne in sharp career;
The savage flame’s ire meets them fugitive!
And now at length they own the penalty
Their own, the natural issue of their crime.
And now the reeling earth, by not a swain
Possest, is by the sea’s profundity
Prest, at her farthest limit, where the sun
(His ray out-measured) divides the orb,
And where, when traversed is the world, the stars
Are hidden. Ether thickens. O’er the light
Spreads sable darkness; and the latest flames
Stagnate in secret rills. A place there is
Whose nature is with sealed penalties
Fiery, and a dreadful marsh white-hot
With heats infernal, where, in furnaces
Horrific, penal deed roars loud, and seethes,
And, rushing into torments, is up-caught
By the flame’s vortex wide; by savage wave
And surge the turbid sand all mingled is
With miry bottom. Hither will be sent,
Groaning, the captive crowd of evil ones,
And wickedness (the sinful body’s train)
To burn! Great is the beating there of breasts,
By bellowing of grief accompanied;
Wild is the hissing of the flames, and thence
The ululation of the sufferers!
And flames, and limbs sonorous, will outrise
Afar: more fierce will the fire burn; and up
To th’ upper air the groaning will be borne.
Then human progeny its bygone deeds
Of ill will weigh; and will begin to stretch
Heavenward its palms; and then will wish to know
The Lord, whom erst it would not know, what time
To know Him had proved useful to them. There,
His life’s excesses, handiworks unjust,
And crimes of savage mind, each will confess,
And at the knowledge of the impious deeds
Of his own life will shudder. And now first,
Whoe’er erewhile cherished ill thoughts of God;
Had worshipped stones unsteady, lyingly
Pretending to divinity; hath e’er
Made sacred to gore-stained images
Altars; hath voiceless pictured figures feared;
Hath slender shades of false divinity
Revered; whome’er ill error onward hath
Seduced; whoe’er was an adulterer,
Or with the sword had slain his sons; whoe’er
Had stalked in robbery; whoe’er by fraud
His clients had deferred; whoe’er with mind
Unfriendly had behaved himself, or stained
His palms with blood of men, or poison mixt
Wherein death lurked, or robed with wicked guise
His breast, or at his neighbour’s ill, or gain
Iniquitous, was wont to joy; whoe’er
Committed whatsoever wickedness
Of evil deeds: him mighty heat shall rack,
And bitter fire; and these all shall endure,
In passing painful death, their punishment.
Thus shall the vast crowd lie of mourning men!
This oft as holy prophets sang of old,
And (by God’s inspiration warned) oft told
The future, none (’tis pity!) none (alas!)
Did lend his ears. But God Almighty willed
His guerdons to be known, and His law’s threats
’Mid multitudes of such like signs promulged.
He ’stablished them by sending prophets more,
These likewise uttering words divine; and some,
Roused from their sleep, He bids go from their tombs
Forth with Himself, when He, His own tomb burst,
Had risen. Many ’wildered were, indeed,
To see the tombs agape, and in clear light
Corpses long dead appear; and, wondering
At their discourses pious, dulcet words!
Starward they stretch their palms at the mere sound,
And offer God and so—victorious Christ
Their gratulating homage. Certain ’tis
That these no more re-sought their silent graves,
Nor were retained within earth’s bowels shut;
But the remaining host reposes now
In lowliest beds, until—time’s circuit run—
That great day do arrive. Now all of you
Own the true Lord, who alone makes this soul
Of ours to see His light and can the same
(To Tartarus sent) subject to penalties;
And to whom all the power of life and death
Is open. Learn that God can do whate’er
He list; for ’tis enough for Him to will ,
And by mere speaking He achieves the deed;
And Him nought plainly, by withstanding, checks.
He is my God alone, to whom I trust
With deepest senses. But, since death concludes
Every career, let whoe’er is to-day
Bethink him over all things in his mind.
And thus, while life remains, while ’tis allowed
To see the light and change your life, before
The limit of allotted age o’ertake
You unawares, and that last day, which is
By death’s law fixt, your senseless eyes do glaze,
Seek what remains worth seeking: watchful be
For dear salvation; and run down with ease
And certainty the good course. Wipe away
By pious sacred rites your past misdeeds
Which expiation need; and shun the storms,
The too uncertain tempests, of the world.
Then turn to right paths, and keep sanctities.
Hence from your gladsome minds depraved crime
Quite banish; and let long-inveterate fault
Be washed forth from your breast; and do away
Wicked ill-stains contracted; and appease
Dread God by prayers eternal; and let all
Most evil mortal things to living good
Give way: and now at once a new life keep
Without a crime; and let your minds begin
To use themselves to good things and to true:
And render ready voices to God’s praise.
Thus shall your piety find better things
All growing to a flame; thus shall ye, too,
Receive the gifts of the celestial life;
And, to long age, shall ever live with God,
Seeing the starry kingdom’s golden joys.
5. Five Books in Reply to Marcion.