I have been searching for some time for a translation of Venantius
Fortunatus's hymn, "Salve festa dies" but with no success. A modern
hymn, "Hail Thee Festal Day" or "Festal Day" is widely known in
Anglican and other circles, but it is so loosely based on the Latin
text as to be unusable for my students.
Our library is unable to obtain Stephen Augustus Hurlbut, _Hortus
Conclusus_ a ten-volume collection published in the 1930s, where it is
probably found in vol. 3; and there is a dissertation by Barbara Jack
Rogers, "The Poems of Venantius Fortunatus: A Translation and
Commentary" (Rutgers, 1969), which may contain this poem, but I don't
have ready access to it. I will pursue these by interlibrary loan,
but if anyone just happens to have direct access to an English
translation, I'd appreciate help. Or I'll have to translate it
myself, I suppose, but making a good translation of poetry does not
happen overnight!
Dennis Martin
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