Deo Opt. Max.
O Thou, who all things hast of nothing made,
Whose hand the radiant firmament displayed:—
With such an undiscernèd swiftness hurled
About the steadfast center of the world;
Against whose rapid course the restless sun
And wandering flames in varied motions run
(Which heat, light, life infuse; time, night, and day
Distinguish; in our human bodies sway),
That hung’st the solid earth in fleeting air:—
Veined with clear springs, which ambient seas repair;
In clouds the mountains wrap their hoary heads;
Luxurious valleys clothed with flowery meads;
Her trees yield fruit and shade; with liberal breasts
All creatures she (their common mother) feasts,
Then man (Thy image) mad’st:—in dignity,
In knowledge, and in beauty, like to Thee;
Placed in a heaven on earth; without his toil,
The ever-flourishing and fruitful soil
Unpurchased food produced; all creatures were
His subjects, serving more for love than fear;
He knew no lord but Thee; but when he fell
From his obedience, all at once rebel,
And in his ruin exercise their might;
Concurring elements against him fight;
Troops of unknown diseases, sorrow, age,
And death, assail him with successive rage;
Hell let forth all her furies, none so great
As man to man; ambition, pride, deceit,
Wrong armed with power, lust, rapine, slaughter reigned;
And flattered vice the name of virtue gained;
Then hills beneath the swelling waters stood;
And all the globe of earth was but one flood,
Yet could not cleanse their guilt; the following race
Worse than their fathers, and their sons more base
(Their god-like beauty lost; sin’s wretched thrall;
No spark of their divine original
Left unextinguished; all envelopèd
With darkness; in their bold transgressions dead),
When Thou didst from the east a light display:—
Which rendered to the world a clearer day;
Whose precepts from hell’s jaws our steps withdraw,
And whose example was a living law;
Who purged us with His blood, the way prepared
To heaven, and those long-chained-up doors unbarred,
How infinite Thy mercy!—which exceeds
The world Thou mad’st, as well as our misdeeds;
Which greater reverence than Thy justice wins,
And still augments Thy honor by our sins.
O who hath tasted of Thy clemency
In greater measure or more oft than I!
My grateful verse Thy goodness shall display,
O Thou, who went’st along in all my way:—
To where the morning with perfumèd wings
From the high mountains of Panchaea springs;
To that new-found-out world, where sober night
Takes from the antipodes her silent flight;
To those dark seas, where horrid winter reigns,
And binds the stubborn floods in icy chains;
To Libyan wastes, whose thirst no showers assuage,
And where swollen Nilus cools the lion’s rage.
Thy wonders in the deep have I beheld,
Yet all by those on Judah’s hills excelled:—
There, where the virgin’s son His doctrine taught,
His miracles and our redemption wrought;
Where I, by Thee inspired, His praises sung,
And on His sepulcher my offering hung.
Which way so e’er I turn my face or feet,
I see Thy glory, and Thy mercy meet:—
Met on the Thracian shores, when in the strife
Of frantic Simoans Thou preserv’dst my life;
So when Arabian thieves belayed us round,
And when by all abandoned, Thee I found;
That false Sidonian wolf (whose craft put on
A sheep-soft fleece; and me, Bellerophon,
To ruin by his cruel letter sent)
Thou didst by Thy protecting hand prevent;
Thou sav’dst me from the bloody massacres
Of faithless Indians, from their treacherous wars,
From raging fevers, from the sultry breath
Of tainted air which cloyed the jaws of death;
Preserved from swallowing seas, when towering waves
Mixed with the clouds and opened their deep graves;
From barbarous pirates ransomed; by those taught,
Successfully with Salian Moors we fought;
Then brought’st me home in safety, that this earth
Might bury me, which fed me from my birth.
Blessed with a healthful age, a quiet mind;
Content with little, to this work designed,
Which I, at length, have finished by Thy aid,
And now my vows have at Thy altar paid.
Jam tetigi Portum,—Valete
Notes:
∆ Preface:
Just as the Epilogue to The Tempest may have been Christopher Marlowe’s sad swan song to the world as he abandoned his role as Shakespeare the playwright and returned home from exile, so too Deo Opt. Max. may have been Marlowe’s even sadder swan song to the world as he faced his imminent death in Virginia Colony after surviving the Indian uprising of March 22, 1622. Read this touching poem aloud, and try to hear the distant echoes of Marlowe’s poetic voice: the “hoary heads,” the “swelling waters,” the “horrid winter,” the “hell’s jaws,” the “frantic Simoans,” the “jaws of death,” the “barbarous pirates,” and et cetera. True, maybe Marlowe used none of these expressions exactly, but it certainly has the ring of Marlowe to me.
Deo Opt. Max. is a paean to God, but mostly it is a prayer. I believe it is Marlowe’s attempt to tap divine mercy one last time while facing a desperate situation. Unfortunately, mercy was not forthcoming. “Jam tetigi Portum,—Valete” may have been the very last words Marlowe, aka Shakespeare, aka Sandys, penned to paper. These Latin words have the literal meaning: “Now I have almost reached harbor. Farewell.” And, a more poetic translation would be: “Now I am very close to death. Farewell everyone.”
The poem is addressed to God and has a dual structure: the first impersonal part consists of one very long and complex sentence which builds to the climactic statement of “How infinite Thy mercy,” and the second very personal part is a testament to the many particular ways in which God’s mercy and glory have been evident in the author’s life. The long opening sentence has the general form: O You, [phrases in prologue]—how infinite Your mercy!—[phrases in epilogue]. Or, more specifically, a condensed paraphrase of this sentence would be: O You, who made all things from nothing, who displayed the sky, who hung the earth in air, and who then made man, when You sent the world Your son, how infinite was Your mercy, a mercy which deserves the highest praise. The second personal half of the poem starts with the words “O who hath tasted of Thy clemency.”
Some editors choose to expand the abbreviation of the title, Deo Opt. Max., into its full Latin of Deo Optimo Maximo. However, if it truly is Christopher Marlowe who wrote the poem, then there is good reason to retain the two abbreviations. The abbreviated title contains three words, and each of these three words has three letters. It is the numerological equivalent to Shakespeare’s “thrice three times” or “the thrice three Muses.”
∆ Links:
Deo optimo maximo.1
Deo optimo maximo.2
Brydges edition [1807]
Griswold edition [1850]
Hannah edition [1870]
Hannah edition: notes
Hooper edition [1872]
Hooper edition: note
Schelling edition [1899]
Brydges excerpt [1815]
Johnstone excerpt [1827]
Courthope excerpt [1903]
Sandys DNB: note
∆ Epilogue to The Tempest:
Epilogue [ Spoken by Prospero ]
Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have’s mine own,
Which is most faint: now, ‘tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon’d be,
Let your indulgence set me free.