( I have added this pattern of my own , to be taken , of course , to be the Sword of the Spirit , which is the word of God , by whoever wishes , while all others fall , to be safe from the anger of princes , and the madness and assault of the people . The two verses on the blade of the sword go backwards in turn : more on this later . On the cross-piece the verse is reciprocal as is the following line of Virgil ,
Musa mihi causas memora quo numine laeso . Aen . 1 I have put an iambic sesquicarmen as the hilt . And so you should initially read as follows :
I do not have riches , nor silks , nor perfume ; I do not have purple robes .
Then , Do I have purple robes ? No . Do I have perfume ? No . Silks ? No . Riches ? No .)
3 . Shepherd ’ s Pipe ( Richard Willes ), p . 24 This poem , shaped like a shepherd ’ s pipe , is inscribed to a German , one John Martin Oltinger , a lawyer whom Willes had met , presumably in the course of his extensive European travels . Written in Paris on 1 st January , 1573 (?), it is offered as a New Year gift , a strena . The blood shed by the infant Jesus at his circumcision ( 1 January is traditionally the Feast of the Circumcision ), prefiguring that which he will shed at the Crucifixion , is favourably compared with the Augustan practice of giving golden coins as New Year presents . The vinum cos with which Willes ends his poem is explained by him in No . 54 of his Poematum Liber as wine with colour , fragrance and taste . C is for color , O for odor , and S for sapor , and the word cos , which these letters produce , properly a whetstone , is here used to mean touchstone , i . e . the benchmark or standard by which the wine in question is judged .
Willes ’ s own scholium , printed and translated below , highlights the popularity of such pipes in Germany , not least at drinking sessions . It also refers to Theocritus ’ poem in this shape , his Syrinx ( cf . p . 180 of Bucolici Graeci , OCT , ed . A . S . F . Gow , Oxford 1952 ). The Syrinx is not now formally classed as one of the Idylls ( of which there are 31 ), but is certainly something
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