Chapter XXX

., II.

[246] So likewise in regard to verse, the perfected two-syllable rhyme came first in Italy, and more slowly in the North, although the North was to produce better Latin poetry.

[247] _Ante_, Chapters XI., IV., and XVI.

[248] _Opusc._ xiv., _De ordine erimitarum_ (Migne 145, col. 329).

“We may see upon a tree a leaf ready to succumb beneath the wintry frosts, and, with the sap of autumnal clemency consumed, even now about to fall, so that it barely cleaves to the twig it hangs from, but displays most evident signs of (its) light ruin. The blasts are quivering, wild winds strike it from all sides, the mid-winter horror of heavy air congeals with cold; and that you may marvel the more, the ground is strewn with the rest of the leaves everywhere flowing down, and, with its locks laid low, the tree is stripped of its grace; yet that alone, none other remaining, endures, and, as the survivor of co-heirs, succeeds to the rights of the brotherhood’s possession. What then is left to be understood from consideration of this thing, save that a leaf of a tree cannot fall unless it receive beforehand the divine command?”

This description is rhetorically elaborated; but Damiani commonly wrote more directly, as in this sentence from a letter to a nobleman, in which Damiani urges him not to fail in his duty to his mother through affection for his wife: “Sed forte dices: mater mea me frequenter exasperat, duris verbis meum et uxoris meae corda perturbat; non possumus tot injuriarum probra perferre, non valemus austeritatis ejus et severae correptionis molestias tolerare” (_Ep._ vii. 3; Migne 144, col. 466). This needs no translation.

[249] _Ante_,