It celebrates Him, sent from the Father, born on the earth, God from a virgin, wearing our mortal shape, teaching and tarrying with us, and atoning for our sins. The best, perhaps, of all his poems is what Trench and March quote: “Mortis portis fractis, fortis Fortior vim sustulit,”— the real original of those splendid lines: “Now broken are the bars of Death, And crushed thy sting, Despair!”— which we find in Bishop Heber’s resurrection hymn, commencing, “God is gone up with a merry noise.” There is a life to these verses which one must understand their author in order to appreciate. They follow, in the best attire that I can give them. They are exultant rather than illustrious. It is the man and not his measures whom we celebrate! Daniel does not think it worth his while to include him at all. Archbishop Trench takes his own text from the _Bibliotheca Cluniacense_, Paris, 1614: ON THE RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD. The gates of death are broken through, The strength of hell is tamed, And by the holy cross anew Its cruel king is shamed. A clearer light has spread its ray Across the land of gloom When he who made the primal day Restores it from the tomb. For so the true Creator died That sinners might not die, And so he has been crucified That we might rise on high. For Satan then was beaten back Where he, our Victor stood; And that to him was deathly black Which was our vital good. For Satan, capturing, is caught, And as he strikes he dies. Thus calmly and with mighty thought The King defeats his lies, Arising whence he had been brought, At once, to seek the skies. Thus God ascended, and returned Again to visit man; For having made him first, he yearned To carry out his plan. To that lost realm our Saviour flew, The earliest pioneer, To people Paradise anew And give our souls good cheer. Peter the Venerable died on December 25th, 1156; but how or with what surroundings we are not told. He was buried beside his old comrade, Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, within the walls of the church which Innocent II. consecrated upon his memorable visit to Cluny. And the _Histoire Litteraire_ breaks out into an unusual eulogy; and declares that in his case the title of “Venerable” was no less honorable than that of “Saint.” They did not make “saints” out of such men as Peter—and I don’t quite see why they should. There was too much flesh-and-blood reality about him, too little of musty theology and altogether too little bigotry. But somehow the broad-faced happy sun proves himself to be the “greater light;” while the moon goes palely on, a ghost in an unaccustomed sky. CHAPTER XXI. BERNARD OF CLUNY.