Fortunatus' original (altered 1632--presumably the text from which the translators worked):
Crux fidelis, inter omnes
arbor una nobilis,
Silva talem nulla profert--
fronde, flore, germine;
dulce ferrum, dulce lignum,
dulce pondus sustinent.
Joseph Connelly's prose translation:
Faithful Cross, tree that is alone in its glory among all other trees;
no forest ever yielded its equal in leaf, flower and fruit.
Loving nails and loving wood bear a loving burden.
(Hmm, I'd say lovelier rather than loving, and the literal sweet is best of all. Still, he's good to get the forest in there.)
From Daniel Joseph Donahoe's 1908 Early Christian Hymns: Translations of the Verses of the Most Notable Latin Writers of the Early and Middle Ages:
Faithful cross, a tree so noble
Never grew in grove or wood;
Never leaf or blossom flourished
Fair as on thy branches glowed;
Sweet the wood and sweet the iron
Bearing up so dear a load.
From the 1924 Hymns from the Liturgy, Translated by Rev. John Fitzpatrick, OMI:
Faithful Cross! of all the forest
Thou art far the noblest tree.
None of all its growth produces
Leaf, or flower, or fruit like thee:
Sweet thy wood is, sweet thy nails are,
And their Burden, sweet is He.
From the 1938 The Hymns of the Roman Breviary and Missal, Metrical Translations by Rev. Cornelius Canon Mulcahy:
Cross of Faith, amongst all others
Thou art tree of noblest strain,
Forest fails to show thy fellow,
Leaf or flower or fruit again:
Sweet the nails, and sweet the timber,
Sweet the burden they sustain.
Of these I prefer Fitzpatrick's, by far. This is not exactly the kindest test, however, because this text has the dreaded triple rhyme. It's very difficult to pull off a three-way rhyme in English, because we have such a rhyme-poor language. Note that the others have at least one evidently forced rhyme: glowed and again (and strain, to a lesser extent.)
Of these I prefer Fitzpatrick's, by far. This is not exactly the kindest test, however, because this text has the dreaded triple rhyme. It's very difficult to pull off a three-way rhyme in English, because we have such a rhyme-poor language. Note that the others have at least one evidently forced rhyme: glowed and again (and strain, to a lesser extent.)
Also note that the Latin has no rhyme.
Fitzpatrick throws a lot of poetry into this brief passage. The verse breathes and swishes like a woodland--all those f's and soft th's. Note the parallel in sound of noblest and forest, all the more beautiful because of their unlike derivations.
Donahoe unfortunately misses the loveliest parallel:
leaf, flower, fruit------------> wood, nails, Christ
Donahoe unfortunately misses the loveliest parallel:
leaf, flower, fruit------------> wood, nails, Christ
Good stuff. Nice tries all around, and it really isn't easy.
By the way, please lastly note that every proper name in this post, except Christ of course, and Fortunatus, is Irish. Which perhaps bodes well for my own ambitions, granddaughter as I am of Bernadette Mary Murphy ("Murph") McCormick.
