III.   MEDIÆVAL LATIN STUDENTS’ SONGS

85

“The transition from these . . . songs to poems of serious import . . . must of necessity be abrupt.” Of the one now to be given it “would have but little to do with a Commersbuch, were it not for the fact the most widely famous modern student-song of Germany has borrowed two passages from its serious and tragic rhythm. Close inspection of Gaudeamus Igitur shows that the metrical structure of that song is based on the principle of quoting one of its long lines and rhyming to it.”

ON CONTEMPT
FOR
THE WORLD.

“DE contemptu mundi:” this is the theme I’ve
     taken:
Time it is from sleep to rise, from death’s torpor
           waken:
Gather virtue’s grain and leaves tares of sin forsaken.
    Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.


Brief is life, and brevity briefly shall be ended:
Death comes quick, fears no man, none hath his dart
           suspended;
Death kills all, to no man’s prayer hath he con-
           descended.
    Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.

86
Where are they who in this world, ere we kept, were
          keeping?
Come unto the churchyard, thou! see where they
           are sleeping!
Dust and ashes are they, worms in their flesh are
           creeping.
    Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.


Into life each man is born with great teen and
           trouble:
All through life he drags along; toil on toil is
           double:
When life’s done, the pangs of death take him, break
           the bubble.
    Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.


If from sin thou hast been turned, born a new man
           wholly,
Changed thy life to better things, childlike, simple,
           holy;
Thus into God’s realm shalt thou enter with the
           lowly.
    Rise up, rise, be vigilant; trim your lamp, be ready.