The Golden Legend: Vi. The School Of Salerno Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AB CCDEEDDDDFDDDGGHIIII JHKLMJMNHOPPO QD HHJJ PP DD MM JD JD J BJ RJBRR DSDSTUDJDJ DD DDD DDV DJJPWWPPXJXJJ P PJDDJJDDJDDDJJDDDDYY DDZJZDJA2DA2DJJD M JDJDDDDB2B2DMMMMDC2C 2DAD2AD2D2AD2DD D DDIIE2 E2F2F2JG2JG2JJJ MJMMDDJMMJMJJMJDH2DH 2JI2A traveling Scholastic affixing his Theses to the gate | A |
of the College | B |
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Scholastic There that is my gauntlet my banner my shield | C |
Hung up as a challenge to all the field | C |
One hundred and twenty five propositions | D |
Which I will maintain with the sword of the tongue | E |
Against all disputants old and young | E |
Let us see if doctors or dialecticians | D |
Will dare to dispute my definitions | D |
Or attack any one of my learned theses | D |
Here stand I the end shall be as God pleases | D |
I think I have proved by profound research | F |
The error of all those doctrines so vicious | D |
Of the old Areopagite Dionysius | D |
That are making such terrible work in the churches | D |
By Michael the Stammerer sent from the East | G |
And done into Latin by that Scottish beast | G |
Erigena Johannes who dares to maintain | H |
In the face of the truth the error infernal | I |
That the universe is and must be eternal | I |
At first laying down as a fact fundamental | I |
That nothing with God can be accidental | I |
Then asserting that God before the creation | J |
Could not have existed because it is plain | H |
That had he existed he would have created | K |
Which is begging the question that should be debated | L |
And moveth me less to anger than laughter | M |
All nature he holds is a respiration | J |
Of the Spirit of God who in breathing hereafter | M |
Will inhale it into his bosom again | N |
So that nothing but God alone will remain | H |
And therein he contradicteth himself | O |
For he opens the whole discussion by stating | P |
That God can only exist in creating | P |
That question I think I have laid on the shelf | O |
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He goes out Two Doctors come in disputing and | Q |
followed by pupils | D |
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Doctor Serafino I with the Doctor Seraphic maintain | H |
That a word which is only conceived in the brain | H |
Is a type of eternal Generation | J |
The spoken word is the Incarnation | J |
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Doctor Cherubino What do I care for the Doctor Seraphic | P |
With all his wordy chaffer and traffic | P |
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Doctor Serafino You make but a paltry show of resistance | D |
Universals have no real existence | D |
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Doctor Cherubino Your words are but idle and empty chatter | M |
Ideas are eternally joined to matter | M |
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Doctor Serafino May the Lord have mercy on your position | J |
You wretched wrangling culler of herbs | D |
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Doctor Cherubino May he send your soul to eternal perdition | J |
For your Treatise on the Irregular Verbs | D |
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They rush out fighting Two Scholars come in | J |
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First Scholar Monte Cassino then is your College | B |
What think you of ours here at Salern | J |
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Second Scholar To tell the truth I arrived so lately | R |
I hardly yet have had time to discern | J |
So much at least I am bound to acknowledge | B |
The air seems healthy the buildings stately | R |
And on the whole I like it greatly | R |
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First Scholar Yes the air is sweet the Calabrian hills | D |
Send us down puffs of mountain air | S |
And in summer time the sea breeze fills | D |
With its coolness cloister and court and square | S |
Then at every season of the year | T |
There are crowds of guests and travellers here | U |
Pilgrims and mendicant friars and traders | D |
From the Levant with figs and wine | J |
And bands of wounded and sick Crusaders | D |
Coming back from Palestine | J |
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Second Scholar And what are the studies you pursue | D |
What is the course you here go through | D |
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First Scholar The first three years of the college course | D |
Are given to Logic alone as the source | D |
Of all that is noble and wise and true | D |
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Second Scholar That seems rather strange I must confess | D |
In a Medical School yet nevertheless | D |
You doubtless have reasons for that | V |
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First Scholar Oh yes | D |
For none but a clever dialectician | J |
Can hope to become a great physician | J |
That has been settled long ago | P |
Logic makes an important part | W |
Of the mystery of the healing art | W |
For without it how could you hope to show | P |
That nobody knows so much as you know | P |
After this there are five years more | X |
Devoted wholly to medicine | J |
With lectures on chirurgical lore | X |
And dissections of the bodies of swine | J |
As likest the human form divine | J |
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Second Scholar What are the books now most in vogue | P |
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First Scholar Quite an extensive catalogue | P |
Mostly however books of our own | J |
As Gariopontus' Passionarius | D |
And the writings of Matthew Platearius | D |
And a volume universally known | J |
As the Regimen of the School of Salern | J |
For Robert of Normandy written in terse | D |
And very elegant Latin verse | D |
Each of these writings has its turn | J |
And when at length we have finished these | D |
Then comes the struggle for degrees | D |
With all the oldest and ablest critics | D |
The public thesis and disputation | J |
Question and answer and explanation | J |
Of a passage out of Hippocrates | D |
Or Aristotle's Analytics | D |
There the triumphant Magister stands | D |
A book is solemnly placed in his hands | D |
On which he swears to follow the rule | Y |
And ancient forms of the good old School | Y |
To report if any confectionarius | D |
Mingles his drugs with matters various | D |
And to visit his patients twice a day | Z |
And once in the night if they live in town | J |
And if they are poor to take no pay | Z |
Having faithfully promised these | D |
His head is crowned with a laurel crown | J |
A kiss on his cheek a ring on his hand | A2 |
The Magister Artium et Physices | D |
Goes forth from the school like a lord of the land | A2 |
And now as we have the whole morning before us | D |
Let us go in if you make no objection | J |
And listen awhile to a learned prelection | J |
On Marcus Aurelius Cassiodorus | D |
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They go in Enter LUCIFER as a Doctor | M |
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Lucifer This is the great School of Salern | J |
A land of wrangling and of quarrels | D |
Of brains that seethe and hearts that burn | J |
Where every emulous scholar hears | D |
In every breath that comes to his ears | D |
The rustling of another's laurels | D |
The air of the place is called salubrious | D |
The neighborhood of Vesuvius lends it | B2 |
An odor volcanic that rather mends it | B2 |
And the buildings have an aspect lugubrious | D |
That inspires a feeling of awe and terror | M |
Into the heart of the beholder | M |
And befits such an ancient homestead of error | M |
Where the old falsehoods moulder and smoulder | M |
And yearly by many hundred hands | D |
Are carried away in the zeal of youth | C2 |
And sown like tares in the field of truth | C2 |
To blossom and ripen in other lands | D |
What have we here affixed to the gate | A |
The challenge of some scholastic wight | D2 |
Who wishes to hold a public debate | A |
On sundry questions wrong or right | D2 |
Ah now this is my great delight | D2 |
For I have often observed of late | A |
That such discussions end in a fight | D2 |
Let us see what the learned wag maintains | D |
With such a prodigal waste of brains | D |
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Reads | D |
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'Whether angels in moving from place to place | D |
Pass through the intermediate space | D |
Whether God himself is the author of evil | I |
Or whether that is the work of the Devil | I |
When where and wherefore Lucifer fell | E2 |
And whether he now is chained in hell ' | - |
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I think I can answer that question well | E2 |
So long as the boastful human mind | F2 |
Consents in such mills as this to grind | F2 |
I sit very firmly upon my throne | J |
Of a truth it almost makes me laugh | G2 |
To see men leaving the golden grain | J |
To gather in piles the pitiful chaff | G2 |
That old Peter Lombard thrashed with his brain | J |
To have it caught up and tossed again | J |
On the horns of the Dumb Ox of Cologne | J |
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But my guests approach there is in the air | M |
A fragrance like that of the Beautiful Garden | J |
Of Paradise in the days that were | M |
An odor of innocence and of prayer | M |
And of love and faith that never fails | D |
Which as the fresh young heart exhales | D |
Before it begins to wither and harden | J |
I cannot breathe such an atmosphere | M |
My soul is filled with a nameless fear | M |
That after all my trouble and pain | J |
After all my restless endeavor | M |
The youngest fairest soul of the twain | J |
The most ethereal most divine | J |
Will escape from my hands forever and ever | M |
But the other is already mine | J |
Let him live to corrupt his race | D |
Breathing among them with every breath | H2 |
Weakness selfishness and the base | D |
And pusillanimous fear of death | H2 |
I know his nature and I know | J |
That of all who in my | I2 |
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(1)
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