Thus professing, thus believing, Never insolently leaving The highway of our faith, Duty weighing, law obeying, Never shall we wander straying Where heresy is death. Such a school took natural refuge in the Holy Ghost and the Virgin, --Grace and Love,--but the Holy Ghost, as usual, profited by it much less than the Virgin. Comparatively little of Adam's poetry is expressly given to the Saint Esprit, and too large a part of this has a certain flavour of dogma:-- Qui procedis ab utroque Genitore Genitoque Pariter, Paraclite! . . . . . . . . . Amor Patris, Filiique Par amborum et utrique Compar et consimilis! The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made nor created nor begotten, but proceeding. The whole three Persons are coeternal together; and coequal. This sounds like a mere versification of the Creed, yet when Adam ceased to be dogmatic and broke into true prayer, his verse added a lofty beauty even to the Holy Ghost; a beauty too serious for modern rhyme:-- Oh, juvamen oppressorum, Oh, solamen miserorum, Pauperum refugium, Da contemptum terrenorum! Ad amorem supernorum Trahe desiderium! 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.