ℹ️ This corpus has no morphological tagging. Glosses are matched by word form against a dictionary — a match does not prove it is the same word (an inflected form can coincide with another word’s lemma). Verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
To the holy and venerable lord Florianus, the abbot, spiritually instructed in the grace of Christ, Arator the subdeacon sends greeting. You who already hold, O Florianus, in the very utterance of your name the flower of merit, sprung from mature understanding; for, while yet young, you gave to old men lessons by which life might prepare its way to heaven: hasten to my song, and to its faltering feet often stretch out the hand of your gentle favor. In meager speech indeed, yet of rich deeds, have I written, and a drop flows with the weight of the sea: among grandiloquent books through a thousand volumes, though you possess the greatest, read also the briefer ones. And after the manner of Nature, which the Author founded in variety, let things lofty or lowly accord with your pursuits.
The earth that bore tigers, that nourishes lions, itself offered its bosom to ants and to bees. And if you consider how the Ruler dispenses all things, the gentle have earned cleverness, the fierce have earned strength. Valor itself, unbroken, abandons unceasing toil and seeks to have varied interchanges. The soldier accustomed to lay the breastplate upon his limbs rejoices to enter the wrestling-ground naked. And those who conquer iron-clad battle-lines and armies strike with their weapons unwarlike beasts. Therefore, holding your step and leaving aside the ancient volumes, give the day to a work which a pious cause may favor.