[Previous: lines 105-167]
Joseph is narrating. A heavenly voice has commanded Mary to marry. Now read on!
“Dum spes ambiguae, dum turba ignara futuri,------------
in secreta domûs omnes evasimus altae
tecta, ubi Ioachides numen placare solebat [170]
virginis ore pater: fuit ara veterrima, nostrae
quam gentis primi posuere, metuque sacratam
ter centum totos atavi coluere per annos.
Hanc humiles circum, et prostrati fundimur omnes,
orantes pacem superos, superûmque parentem, [175]
det signum cœlo placidus quem poscat ab alto.
In medio astabat lacrymans pulcherrima virgo,
flaventes effusa comas, demissaque largo
rorantes oculos fletu: pudor ora pererrans
cana rosis veluti miscebat lilia rubris. [180]
Qualis virgineos ubi lavit in aequore vultus
luna recens, stellis latè comitantibus, orta,
ingreditur gracili cœli per cœrula cornu:
talis erat virgo, juvenum stipata corona,
multa Deum ver bis testata, Deique ministros [185]
aligeros, non sponte suâ hœc ad munera flecti.
Hortatur pavidam pater, et lacrymantia tergit
lumina, iussa docens Superûm, simul oscula libat.”
“Whilst their hopes were unclear, their future open,------------
we all went back to the high-roofed house where
Joachim, the girl's father, offered sacrifices to God [170]
and prayed. He had an ancient altar, one of
the first ever built in our nation, sanctified
with awe by three centuries of forefathers.
Humbly kneeling around this we poured out
libation and prayed to higher powers [175]
for peace, and a sign who the husband should be.
The virgin stood, tearful, in the middle,
her hair dishevelled, her big eyes downcast
and weeping: modesty flushed across her
pale visage like roses mingled among lilies. [180]
As when, washing her maiden face in fresh waters,
the new moon, surrounded everywhere by stars
rises through the dark blue crowned with slender horns;
even so did she, surrounded by young men,
swear before God and his two-winged messengers [185]
that she did not willingly submit to this duty.
Her father wiped the scared girl’s tears away
and commended God’s commandments with a kiss.”
The altar in Joachim’s house in line 172 is metuque sacratama—Gardner translates as ‘an ancient altar, built by remote ancestors and consecrated in fear’, which has an odd vibe; for although metus can mean ‘fear, dread’ is also means ‘awe’ which is surely what’s indicated here.
Mary’s maidenly blush, pudor ora pererrans/cana rosis veluti miscebat lilia rubris, ‘a blush of modesty crossed her pale face, like red roses among the lilies’, is adapted from Vergil’s description of Lavinia’s blush:
Indum sanguineo veluti violaverit ostroVery nice I'm sure, but I’m more struck, personally, by the lovely moon simile that follows:
siquis ebur, aut mixta rubent ubi lilia multa
alba rosa: talis virgo dabat ore colores. [Aeneid 12:67-69]
‘As when someone stains Indian ivory with crimson dye, or white lilies blush when mingled with many a rose—such hues her maiden features showed’
Qualis virgineos ubi lavit in aequore vultusGardner’s prose version of this is: ‘as when the new moon, surrounded by stars, bathes its virginal face in a stream and rises through the deep-blue heavens with delicate horns …’
luna recens, stellis latè comitantibus, orta,
ingreditur gracili cœli per cœrula cornu. [Christiad, 3:181-83]
This simile doesn’t have a direct Vergilian prototype, I think; although there’s certainly a lot of moon imagery in the Aeneid: as when Achaemenides recalls waiting for rescue from the Cyclop’s cave in Book 3 and seeing not once but three times the moon's horns fill with light: tertia iam lunae se cornua lumine complent [3.645]—three months, he means, but it’s a shimmering image. Or else when Aeneas glimpses Dido in the underworld ‘as one sees, or thinks he sees, the new moon through the clouds’ obscuram qualem primo qui surgere mense aut vidět/aut vidisse putat per nubila lunam [6.453-4].
I think this image pays forward into Milton, one of many instances where Paradise Lost draws on Vida.
Queen of Heav'n, with crescent Horns;Sidonia is Phoenicia, although Milton in the very next lines adds that this Astartean lunar goddess was ‘in Sion also not unsung’. Then, three books later, there are these luminous lines, drawn like a discrete curtain by Milton to distract us from dwelling too lubriciously on the thought that Adam and Eve have retired to bed for, we assume, some prelapsarian sex:
To whose bright Image nightly by the Moon
Sidonian Virgins paid thir Vows and Songs, [PL, 1:439-41]
…. now glow'd the FirmamentI'm sure I'm getting old and soppy, but that really does strike me as very beautiful poetry.
With living Saphirs: Hesperus that led
The starrie Host, rode brightest, till the Moon
Rising in clouded Majestie, at length
Apparent Queen unvaild her peerless light,
And o're the dark her Silver Mantle threw. [PL 4:604-9]
The image at the top is Cristoforo de Predis's Morte del Sole, della Luna e caduta delle stelle, to be found in Miniatura da Storie di San Gioachino, Sant'Anna, di Maria Vergine, di Gesù, del Battista e della fine del mondo (1476). It's presently in the Biblioteca nazionale di Torino.
[Next: lines 189-253]
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