lso Herrick, _A Thanksgiving to God_:--

"Lord, I confess too, when I dine,
The pulse is thine.

* * * * *

'Tis thou that crown'st my glittering hearth
With guiltless mirth,
And giv'st me wassail bowls to drink,
Spiced to the brink."

28 The original _dactylico_ refers to the metre of the Latin of this
poem. For a rendering of ll. 1-65 in the metre of the original see
Glover, _Life and Letters in the Fourth Century_, pp. 267-269.

58 This and the following lines should satisfy the most ardent
vegetarian who seeks to uphold his abstinence from animal food by
the customs of the early Church. In Christian circles, however, the
abstinence was practised on personal and spiritual grounds, _e.g._,
Jerome (_de Regul. Monach._, xi.) says, "The eating of flesh is the
seed-plot of lust" (_seminarium libidinis_): so also Augustine (_de
moribus Ecc. Cath._, i. 33), who supports what doubtless was the
view of Prudentius, namely that the avoidance of animal flesh was a
safe-guard but not a binding Christian duty.

75 _Unwed._ Prudentius thus adopts the view of the ancient world on
the question of the generation of bees. Cf. Virgil, _Geo._ iv. 198,
and Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, xi. 16. Dryden's translation of Virgil
(_l.c._) is as follows:--

"But (what's more strange) their modest appetites,
Averse from Venus, fly the nuptial rights;
No lust enervates their heroic mind,
Nor wastes their strength on wanton womankind,
But in their mouths reside their genial powers,
They gather children from the leaves and flowers."

86 Cf. Ps. liv. 18, 19 (Vulg.): _Vespere et mane et meridie narrabo
et annuntiabo et exaudiet vocem meam._ "In the evening and morning
and at noonday will I pray, and that instantly and he shall hear my
voice" (P. B. Version).

127 This is, strictly speaking, an error: it is the woman's seed
which is to bruise the serpent's head. The error was perpetuated
in the Latin Church by the Vulgate of Gen. iii. 15, _ipsa conteret
caput tuum_, where _ipsa_ refers to the woman (= she herself).

157 The epithet "white-robed" refers to the newly-baptized converts
who received the white robe as a symbol of their ne