1   Great are thy judgements and hard to expound; and thus it was that uninstructed souls went astray. 2   Thus heathen men imagined that they could lord it over thy holy people; but, prisoners of darkness and captives of unending night, they lay each immured under his own roof, fugitives from eternal providence. 3   Thinking that their secret sins might escape detection beneath a dark pall of oblivion, they lay in disorder, dreadfully afraid, terrified by apparitions. 4   For the dark corner that held them offered no refuge from fear, but loud unnerving noises roared around them, and phantoms with downcast unsmiling faces passed before their eyes. 5   No fire, however great, had force enough to give them light, nor had the brilliant

Pattern of divine justice flaming stars strength to illuminate that hideous darkness. 6   There shone upon them only a blaze, of no man's making, that terrified them, and in their panic they thought the real world even worse than that imaginary sight. 7   The tricks of the sorcerers' art failed, and all their boasted wisdom was exposed and put to shame; 8   for the very men who profess to drive away fear and trouble from sick souls were themselves sick with dread that made them ridiculous. 9   Even if nothing frightful was there to terrify them, yet having once been scared by the advancing vermin and the hissing serpents, 10   they collapsed in terror, refusing even to look upon the air from which there can be no escape. ^note 11   For wickedness proves a cowardly thing when condemned by an inner witness, and in the grip of conscience gives way to forebodings of disaster. 12   Fear is nothing but an abandonment of the aid that comes from reason; 13   and hope, defeated by this inward weakness, capitulates before ignorance of the cause by which the torment comes.

14   So all that night, which really had no power against them because it came upon them from the powerless depths of hell, they slept the same haunted sleep, 15   now harried by portentous spectres, now paralysed by the treachery of their own souls; sudden and unforeseen, fear came upon them. 16   Thus a man would fall down where he stood and be held in durance, locked in a prison that had no bars. 17   Farmer or shepherd or labourer toiling in the wilds, he was caught, and awaited the inescapable doom; the same chain of darkness bound all alike. 18   The whispering breeze, the sweet melody of birds in spreading branches, 19   the steady beat of water that rushes by, the headlong crash of rocks falling, the racing of creatures as they bound along unseen, the roar of fierce wild beasts, or echo reverberating from hollows in the hills—all these sounds paralysed them with fear. 20   The whole world was bathed in the bright light of day, and went about its tasks unhindered; 21   those men alone were overspread with heavy night, fit image of the darkness that awaited them; and heavier than the darkness was the burden each was to himself.

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