Galene, frustra es
The Physician's Limitation
The author rejects Galen's medical intervention, noting that the soul's sickness lies beyond the reach of physical medicine.
Galen, you're wasting your time; why do you overwhelm a miserable man, pressing him with so many waves of questions, probing the pulsing arteries of this fluid, bodily mass? He is sick in his soul—a sickness that neither medicine chests nor slow-acting drugs can reach; even if you were to plunder the East for both, the soul still wanders beyond your reach, lawless. If you're powerless to heal and can only kill, I won't be led by you to the best of mothers; unless I depart as holily as she did, I'll be even more widowed by that death.
The Fever of Devotion
The author reinterprets his emotional state not as a sickness to be cured, but as a healthy, spiritual fervor born of his mother's memory.
Look instead at how you wander in your ignorance, testing a healthy arm; if it burns and grows hot with the fever of writing, the Mother is there in the pulsing vein. If you're all swollen, if I'm puffed up and noisy, don't blame the limbs; the cause lies hidden in the soul that gives birth to the mother's praises, and for those who are heavy, medicine isn't safe. My condition is irregular now; don't judge my temperament by another's standard. What you consider a fever is actually healthy, and the one thing that heals the soul.
Read the original Latin
Galene, frustra es, cur miserum premens Tot quaestionum fluctibus obruis, Arterias tractans micantes Corporeae fluidaeque molis? Aegroto mentis: quam neque pixides Nec tarda possunt pharmaca consequi, Utrumque si praederis Indum, Ultra animus spatiatur exlex. Impos medendi, occidere si potes, Nec sic parentem ducar ad optimam: Ni sancte, uti Mater, recedam, Morte magis viduabor illa. Quin cerne ut erres inscie, brachium Tentando sanum: si calet, aestuans, Ardore scribendi calescit, Mater inest saliente vena. Si totus infler, si tumeam crepax, Ne membra culpes, causa animo latet Qui parturit laudes parentis: Nec gravidis medicina tuta est. Irregularis nunc habitus mihi est: Non exigatur crasis ad alterum. Quod tu febrem censes, salubre est, Atque animo medicatur unum.
The Latin Poems companion
Read all 57 of Herbert's Latin poems, one a day
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Herbert's short poems were written for meditative re-reading; Chosen Portion serves one per day, turning the two collections into a two-month devotional cycle
- All 57 Latin poems in modern English, roughly two months of daily readings
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- Includes the full Sub Rosa archive of 78 historic devotional works