When we reach the next paragraph the secret of this surprising paradoxical sympathy is out. It is the literary and esthetic side of St. Francis that has appealed to him, and like Renan he does not hesitate to give "the poor little man of God" a place among the great original geniuses of all time, associating his name with that of Dante. "Prose could not satisfy this ardent soul, and he made poetry. Latin was too learned for this simple, popular nature, and he composed in his mother tongue, in Italian. The beginnings of the mundane poetry of the Italians are in Sicily, at the court of kings; the beginnings of their religious poetry are in Umbria, with St. Francis. His are the humble upper waters of a mighty stream: at the beginning of the Thirteenth Century, it is St. Francis, at the end, Dante. Now it happens that St. Francis, too, like the Alexandrian songstress, has his hymn for the sun, for Adonis; Canticle of the Sun, Canticle of the Creatures, the poem goes by both names. Like the Alexandrian hymn, it is designed for popular use, but not for use by King Ptolemy's people; artless in language, irregular in rhythm, it matches with the childlike genius that produced it, and the simple natures that loved and repeated it." Probably the most satisfactory translation for those who may not be able to appreciate the original of this sublime hymn that has evoked so many tributes, is the following literal rendering into English in which a quite successful attempt to give the naif rhythm of the original Italian, which necessarily disappears in any formal rhymed translation, has been made by Father Paschal Robinson of the Order of St. Francis for his recent edition of the writings of St. Francis. [Footnote 23] [Footnote 23: Philadelphia, The Dolphin Press, 1906.] {258} "Here begin the praises of the Creatures which the Blessed Francis made to the praise and honor of God while he was ill at St. Damian's: