Consolator et fundator,
 Habitator et amator,
   Cordium humilium,
 Pelle mala, terge sordes,
 Et discordes fac Concordes,
   Et affer praesidium!

Oh, helper of the heavy-laden,
 Oh, solace of the miserable,
   Of the poor, the refuge,
 Give contempt of earthly pleasures! 
 To the love of heavenly treasures
   Lift our hearts’ desire!

Consolation and foundation,
 Dearest friend and habitation
   Of the lowly-hearted,
 Dispel our evil, cleanse our foulness,
 And our discords turn to concord,
   And bring us succour!

Adam’s scholasticism was the most sympathetic form of mediaeval philosophy.  Even in prose, the greatest writers have not often succeeded in stating simply and clearly the fact that infinity can make itself finite, or that space can make itself bounds, or that eternity can generate time.  In verse, Adam did it as easily as though he were writing any other miracle,—­as Gaultier de Coincy told the Virgin’s,—­and any one who thinks that the task was as easy as it seems, has only to try it and see whether he can render into a modern tongue any single word which shall retain the whole value of the word which Adam has chosen:—­

Ne periret homo reus
 Redemptorem misit Deus,
 Pater unigenitum;
 Visitavit quos amavit
 Nosque vitae revocavit
 Gratia non meritum.

Infinitus et Immensus,
 Quem non capit ullus sensus
 Nec locorum spatia,
 Ex eterno temporalis,
 Ex immenso fit localis,
 Ut restauret omnia.

To death condemned by awful sentence,
 God recalled us to repentance,
 Sending His only Son;
 Whom He loved He came to cherish;
 Whom His justice doomed to perish,
 By grace to life he won.

Infinity, Immensity,
 Whom no human eye can see
 Or human thought contain,
 Made of infinity a space,
 Made of Immensity a place,
 To win us Life again.

The English verses, compared with the Latin, are poor enough, with the canting jingle of a cheap religion and a thin philosophy, but by contrast and comparison they give higher value to the Latin.  One feels the dignity and religious quality of Adam’s chants the better for trying to give them an equivalent.  One would not care to hazard such experiments on poetry of the highest class like that of Dante and Petrarch, but Adam was conventional both in verse and thought, and aimed at obtaining his effects from the skilful use of the Latin sonorities for the purposes of the chant.  With dogma and metaphysics he dealt boldly and even baldly as he was required to do, and successfully as far as concerned the ear or the voice; but poetry was hardly made for dogma; even the Trinity was better expressed mathematically than by rhythm.  With the stronger emotions, such as terror, Adam was still conventional, and showed that he thought of the chant more than of the feeling and exaggerated the sound