In answer to his friend’s praise of home, he praised Spain, in which he was living, and many copious descriptions of time and place run through his other writings[24]; but while he yielded nothing to Ausonius in the matter of friendship, ’sooner shall life disappear from my body than thy image from my heart,’ he was without his quiet musing delight in Nature.  For her the heathen had the clearer eye and warmer heart; the Christian bishop only acknowledged her existence in relation to his Creator, declaring with pride that no power had been given to us over the elements, nor to them over us, and that not from the stars but from our own hearts come the hindrances to virtue.

Lives of the saints and paraphrases of the story of creation were the principal themes of the Christian poets of the fourth and fifth centuries.  In some of these the hermit was extolled with a dash of Robinson Crusoe romance, and the descriptions of natural phenomena in connection with Genesis often showed a feeling for the beauty of Nature in poetic language.  Dracontius drew a detailed picture of Paradise with much self-satisfaction.

Then in flight the joyous feathered throng passed through the heavens, beating the air with sounding wings, various notes do they pour forth in soothing harmony, and, methinks, together praise for that they were accounted worthy to be created.[26]

For the charming legend of Paradise was to many Christian minds of this time what the long-lost bliss of Elysium and the Golden Age had been to the Hellenic poets and the Roman elegist—­the theme of much vivid imagery and highly-coloured word-painting.

Eternal spring softens the air, a healing flame floods the world with light, all the elements glow in healing warmth; as the shades of night fade, day rises....  Then the feathered flocks fly joyfully through the air, beating it with their wings in the rush of their passage, and with flattering satisfaction their voices are heard, and I think they praise God that they were found worthy to be created; some shine in snowy white, some in purple, some in saffron, some in yellow gold; others have white feathers round the eyes, while neck and breast are of the bright tint of the hyacinth ... and upon the branches, the birds are moved to and fro with them by the wind.

This shews careful observation of detail; but, for the most part, such idyllic feeling was checked by lofty religious thoughts.

‘Man,’ he cries, ’should rule over Nature, over all that it contains, over all earth offers in fruit, flowers, and verdure that tree and vine, sea and spring, can give.’  He summons all creation to praise the Creator—­stars and seasons, hail-storm and lightning, earth, sea, river and spring, cloud and night, plants, animals, and light; and he describes the flood in bold flights of fancy.

In the three books of Avitus[27] we have ’a complete poem of the lost Paradise, far removed from a mere paraphrase or versification of the Bible,’[28] which shews artistic leanings and sympathetic feeling here and there.  As Catullus[29] pictures the stars looking down upon the quiet love of mortals by night, and Theocritus[30] makes the cypresses their only witnesses, the Christian poet surrounds the marriage of our first parents with the sympathy of Nature: