The Pope as a Poet.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XVII, Issue 5462, 19 December 1892, Page 3

The Pope as a Poet.

M. Bcnoist gives in the Temps an account of the Pope as the author of poetry. He is quoted by the Paris correspondent of the Daily News thus : —As the audience drew to an end. the Pope went to a marble console that was behind his chair, and taking up from beside an ebony crucifix a little case, handed it to me, saying, with a smile, "You wished to see a collection of my poems. Here it is, but not complete. The other volume will not be ready before the end of October." When I was in the anteroom I opened the case, which was of cardboard, and found a volume in white binding, with delicate cold ornaments. Near the edge, and in the centre were the Papal arms in old gold. The back was in moire silk. The Papal arms were repeated on a flyleaf, and thero was also a poor portrait of the Holy Father. This volume is No. 12 of a second edition by Undine, of which but a hundred copies were printed by the presses of the Committee of Patronage for Catholic Youths. It was beautifully Sot up, and the vignettes and ornamental letters were simply exquisite. They were faintly tinted, some in blue, or rose, or green, or slightly silvered. It was just the book in which a poet might long to have his thoughts presented to the world. A preface by Enrico Valle, of the Order of .Jesus,says "The character of the Pope's verse is Virgilian, not only in the Latin tongue being employed, and in the manner in which the phrase is managed, but in its sensibility, the nobleness of the choice of subjects, and the ideas. It is suave, elegant, easy, and has the Virgilian rhythm. The Pope deals with Latin as with his mother tongue. His epigrammatic poems are linht, lively, and strike where they ought. They are well winged, but they have not poisoned barbs. The Pope as a satirist or wit brings Iwlm to the wound he inflicts." One of the verses has this subject : A youth asked one day for an audience, and avowed that his life had been too free for virtue. The Holy Father advised him to retire to a monastery for some time, and to banish from his mind every thought that could defile it. This is a prose rendering of what he wrote : •• Floras, my child, a furious fever burns you, a foul plague softens your body and your soul. You have been drinking, and without shame, of an infernal and poisonous cup. It is the cup of Circe._ Itevokes in your mind images of animal bestiality. If you care to be saved fly from the Siren's song and from the inhospitable shore. Take good courage and tiaht temptation while fleeing from it. If you do. God will fight for you and look on you with a favorable eye. Already the hideous serpent, full of rage at the prospect of defeat, plunges into tho black waters of the Styx. Florus, my son, be saved."