Poem on Christ
The whole work on one page. Select a passage number to open that passage with its notes, Scripture references, and citation.
Chapter 1
1PL 61:972–973
Proles vera Dei cunctisque antiquior annis, / Nunc genitus qui semper eras, a lucisque repertor, / Ante tuæ matrisque parens, quem misit ab astris / Æquævus genitor, Verbique in semina fusum / Virgineos habitare sinus, et corporis artus / iussit inire vias, parvaque in sede morari: / Quem sedes non ulla capit, qui lumine primo / Vidisti, quidquid mundo nascente creares, / Ipse opifex, opus ipse tui dignatus iniquas / Etatis sentire vices, et corporis hujus / Dissimiles perferre modos, hominemque subire, / Ut posses monstrare Deum, ne lubricus error / Et decepta diu varii solertia mundi / Pectora tam multis sineret mortalia saeclis. / Auctorem scivere Deum te, conscia partus / Mater, et attoniti pecudum sensere timores : / Te nova sollicito lustrantes sidera visu / In coelo videre prius, lumenque secuti / Invenere magi: tu noxia pectora solvis. / Elapsasque animas in corpora functa reducis, / Mundus et ad manes penetras, mortisque latebras / Immortalis adis : tibi tantum non fuit uni / Principium finisve mori, sed nocte refusa / In coelum ad Patrem scandis, rursusque perenni / Ordine purgatis adimis contagia terris. / Tu solus Patrisque comes, tu Spiritus insons, / Et toties unus, triplicique in lumine simplex. / Quis nisi pro cunctis aliud, quis credere possit, / Te potuisse mori, poteras qui reddere vitam ?
True offspring of God, older than all the years, now born, you who always were, and discoverer of light, parent of your own mother before her, whom the coeternal Father sent from the stars, poured into the seeds of the Word, to dwell in a virgin's womb, and bade you enter the ways of a body's limbs and stay in a small dwelling: you whom no dwelling contains, who in the first light saw whatever you would create as the world was born, yourself the maker, yourself the work, deigned to feel the harsh changes of age, and to endure the unlike ways of this body, and to take on manhood, that you might show God, lest slippery error and the long-deceived cleverness of the varied world should leave mortal hearts astray for so many ages. Your mother, aware of the birth, knew you as God the Author, and the astonished fears of the cattle sensed you; scanning new stars with anxious gaze, the Magi first saw you in heaven and, following the light, found you. You set free guilty hearts, and lead back souls that had slipped away into dead bodies; you pierce the world and reach the shades, and the hiding places of death you, the immortal, enter: to you alone dying was neither beginning nor end, but when the night had been driven back you climb into heaven to the Father, and again in an everlasting order you take away the defilement from the cleansed lands. You alone are both the Father's companion, you the innocent Spirit, and so many times one, simple in a threefold light. Who, unless it were for all, who could believe that you could die, you who could give back life?