NOTES regarding OTIA SACRA

  1. The version with the 17th century typography attempts to follow rigorously the line layout for the poems as this is clearly very important to the poet.

    Substituting the modern 's' has resulted in very slightly altered poetry line alignments, sometimes by a letter only. This may or may not be rectified at a future date.

  2. Due to using centered html tables the vertical alignment between pages is not always in a plumb line.

  3. Those with a Nostradamus instinct or even a interest in conspiracy theories will possibly find of interest the template-like reference to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki & Hiroshima at the end of World War Two. This occurs on page 39 in the poem Trium Gratiarum maxima Charitas, where Fane writes:

    This Mushrum may appear,
    When first the Sun
    Doth rise;
    But when His Hemisphere is run,
    And that the Ev'n draws near,
    It shuts up all its treasure, and so dies.

    The same kind of reference to the symbols by which the Japanese Empire revealed itself, the Sun and the Chrysanthemum, may speculatively appear in the poem Contemplatio Diurna on page 13 :

    When we behold the Morning Dew
    Dissolve ith' rising Sun: What would it shew ?
    But that a Sun to us did rise,
    Our Fathers hoary sin to Atomise.
    And when the Flowers display'd appear,
    To entertain the mounting Charettier:
    What would they speak in that fair dress ?
    But Man's redemption out of wretchedness.
    For the shade-shortning Noon can tell
    The Proud, and such as with Ambition swell;
    That whilst upon Opinions wing
    They seek to fore, they work their lessening.
    And the Prognostick Western set,
    May Our Conditions rightly counterfeit;
    For if we rise, shine, and set Cleer,
    The Day-Star from on high's our Comforter:
    If Sin beclowd us as we fall,
    Our next dayes rise will prove our Funerall:
    Et quid lachrymabilius?

    and with a little mistranslation: Et quid Lachrymabilius, a pun on Q.E.D./woe the Chrysanthemum throne?
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