There are two other passages in modern Latin poets which are well worthy perusal, on a similar subject: though the principal part of their beauty lying rather in expression than in thought, I have not considered it worth while to translate them. I allude to the fourteenth Elegy of the Third Book of the Suspiria animæ amantis of Herman Hugo; and to the tenth Elegy of the First Book of Jacobus Zevecotius, which is entitled, An Aspiration to the Celestial Country.
Leah and Rachel are allegorized in three different ways by mediæval poets. 1. Of the active and contemplative life; and thence also by an easy transition to the toil we endure on earth,—and the Eternal Contemplation of God's glory in Heaven, as here. So, again, in a fine but rugged prose in the Nuremberg Missal for S. Jerome's Day.
Then, when all carnal strife hath ceased,
And we from warfare are released,
O grant us, in that Heavenly Feast;
To see Thee as Thou art:
To Leah give, the battle won,
Her Rachel's dearer heart:
To Martha, when the strife is done,
Her Mary's better part.
The parallel symbol of Martha and Mary is, however, in this sense, far more common; and is even found in Epitaphs, as in that to Gundreda de Warren, daughter of William the Conqueror.
A Martha to the houseless poor, a Mary in her love,
And though her Martha's part be gone, her Mary's lives above.
Bernard, in the passage we are considering, has a
