"Christusque nobis sit cibus Potusque noster sit fides; Laeti bibamus sobriam Ebrietatem Spiritus."

Translation.

          “May Christ be now the Bread we eat,
          Be simple Faith our potion sweet: 
          Let our intoxication be
          The Spirit’s calm sobriety.”

The idea is familiar to readers of Herbert and Herrick, though it
is elaborated by them with quaint conceits somewhat foreign to the
Latin poet.  Cf.  Herbert, The Banquet:—­

“O what sweetnesse from the bowl
Fills my soul!

* * * * *

Is some starre (fled from the sphere)
Melted there,
As we sugar melt in wine?

* * * * *

Doubtless neither starre nor flower
Hath the power
Such a sweetnesse to impart: 
Only God, Who gives perfumes,
Flesh assumes,
And with it perfumed my heart.”

Also Herrick, A Thanksgiving to God:—­

“Lord, I confess too, when I dine,
The pulse is thine.

* * * * *

’Tis thou that crown’st my glittering hearth
With guiltless mirth,
And giv’st me wassail bowls to drink,
Spiced to the brink.”

28 The original dactylico refers to the metre of the Latin of this
     poem.  For a rendering of ll. 1-65 in the metre of the original see
     Glover, Life and Letters in the Fourth Century, pp. 267-269.

58 This and the following lines should satisfy the most ardent
     vegetarian who seeks to uphold his abstinence from animal food by
     the customs of the early Church.  In Christian circles, however, the
     abstinence was practised on personal and spiritual grounds, e.g.,
     Jerome (de Regul.  Monach., xi.) says, “The eating of flesh is the
     seed-plot of lust” (seminarium libidinis):  so also Augustine (de
     moribus Ecc.  Cath., i. 33), who supports what doubtless was the
     view of Prudentius, namely that the avoidance of animal flesh was a
     safe-guard but not a binding Christian duty.

75 Unwed. Prudentius thus adopts the view of the ancient world on
     the question of the generation of bees.  Cf.  Virgil, Geo. iv. 198,
     and Pliny, Nat.  Hist., xi. 16.  Dryden’s translation of Virgil
     (l.c.) is as follows:—­

          “But (what’s more strange) their modest appetites,
          Averse from Venus, fly the nuptial rights;
          No lust enervates their heroic mind,
          Nor wastes their strength on wanton womankind,
          But in their mouths reside their genial powers,
          They gather children from the leaves and flowers.”

86 Cf.  Ps. liv. 18, 19 (Vulg.):  Vespere et mane et meridie narrabo
     et annuntiabo et exaudiet vocem meam. “In the evening and morning
     and at noonday will I pray, and that instantly and he shall hear my
     voice” (P.  B. Version).