Hymn 12

12. The Passion of the Apostles Peter and Paul.

“They gather for the festivities more than usual: tell me, friend, what it is.

Through all Rome they run about and rejoice.”

“This festal day of the apostolic triumph returns to us,

made noble by the blood of Paul and Peter,

one day saw both, yet renewed when the year is full,

laurelled by a proud death.

The Tiberine marsh knows it, lapped by the river flowing near,

the turf dedicated by two trophies,

witness of both the cross and the sword, with which, watering those same

grasses, a rain of blood flowed twice.

The first sentence snatched Peter, ordered by Nero’s laws

to hang from an overhanging beam,

yet he, fearing to rival the honour of a lofty death

and to court the glory of so great a Master,

demands that they fix his head downward, his feet upward,

so that he may look on the foot of the stake with his brain.

His hands are fastened below, his soles turned to the top,

the greater in mind, the lower in posture.

He had known that heaven is wont to be reached more quickly from the lowly;

he bent down his face, about to give up his spirit.

As the rounded orb of the bent year ran its course on the wheel

and the risen sun brought back the same day,

Nero vomited his hot fury upon Paul’s throat,

and bids the teacher of the nations be smitten,

he himself had foretold for himself a swift end to come:

“I must go to Christ, now I am loosed,” he says,

and without delay he is dragged forth, given to punishment, sacrificed by the sword;

not the hour, not the day deceived the prophet.

The sacred Tiber divides the bones of the two from either bank,

while it flows between the consecrated tombs.

The region on the right holds Peter, received in golden halls,

green with the olive, murmuring with the stream.

For a flow of water, risen from the brow of the rock, has roused

a perennial fount, fruitful of the chrism.

Now it rushes over precious marbles and makes the slope slippery,

until it ripples in a green pool.

There is an inner part of the tomb, where, with sounding falls,

a pool is rolled in a snowy deep,

an all-coloured painting above tinges the glassy waves,

the moss gleams and the gold grows green

and the dark-blue water draws the shadow of the overhanging purple:

you would believe the panelled ceiling moved with the waves.

There the shepherd himself feeds his sheep with the chill of the cold fount,

whom he sees thirsting for the streams of Christ.

On another side the Ostian Way keeps Paul’s memorial,

where the river skirts the left bank,

royal is the splendour of the place; a good prince consecrated these heights

and lavished cost upon its circuit with great talents,

he overlaid the beams with gold-leaf, that all the light

within might be golden, like a sunbeam at its rising.

He set Parian columns beneath the tawny panelling,

which there a fourfold row marks off.

Then arches ran variously through, with glass of glorious hue:

so meadows gleam again with spring flowers.

Behold, two gifts of faith, the supreme Father bestowing them,

which he gave to the toga’d city to be honoured.

See, the people of Romulus pour through the forked streets,

one light glows in two feasts,

yet let us hasten to both with quickened step,

and enjoy to the full both these hymns and those.

We will go further where the way of Hadrian’s bridge leads,

then we will make for the left bank of the river.

First the watchful priest performs the rites across the Tiber,

soon he runs back hither and doubles his vows.

It is enough for you to have learned these things at Rome: do you, returned home,

remember to honour the twice-festal day thus.”