Hymns of the Eastern Church

tr. Neale, 1862

6. S. Theophanes

Idiomela on Friday of Tyrophagus, that is, of Quinquagesima

Δεῦτε ἅπαντες πιστοί,

Hither, and with one accord,
Sing the servants of the Lord:
Sing each great ascetic sire;—
Anthony shall lead the choir:
Let Euthymius next him stand;
Then, in order, all the band.
Make we joyous celebration
Of their heavenly conversation;
Of their glory, how they rise,
Like another Paradise:
These the trees our God hath plac’d,
Trees, with fruit immortal grac’d;
Bringing forth, for Christ on high,
Flowers of Life that cannot die;
With the sweetness that they fling
Mortal spirits nourishing.
Filled with God, and ever blest,
For our pardon make request!

Egypt, hail, thou faithful strand!
Hail, thou holy Libyan land!
Nurturing for the realm on high
Such a glorious company!
They by many a toil intense,
Chastity and continence,
Perfect men to God upreared,
Stars to guide us have appeared:
They, by many a glorious sign,
Many a beam of Power Divine,
To the earth’s remotest shore
Far and wide their radiance pour.
Holy Fathers, bright and blest,
For our pardon make request!

By what skill of mortal tongue
Shall your wondrous acts be sung?
All the conflicts of the soul,
All your struggles towards the goal;
And your virtues’ prize immense,
And your victories over sense,
How perpetual watch ye kept
Over passion, prayed and wept:
Yea, like very angels came,
Visible in earthly frame,
And with Satan girt for fight
Utterly o’erthrew his might.
Fam’d for signs and wonders rare,
Join to ours, great Saints, your prayer:
Ask that we, ye ever blest,
May attain the Land of Rest!

Stichera at the First Vespers of Cheese Sunday

(Quinquagesima.)

Adam’s Complaint

“The Lord my Maker, forming me of clay,
By His own Breath the breath of life convey’d:
O’er all the bright new world He gave me sway,—
A little lower than the Angels made.
But Satan, using for his guile
The crafty serpent’s cruel wile,
Deceiv’d me by the Tree;
And severed me from God and grace,
And wrought me death, and all my race,
As long as time shall be.
O Lover of the sons of men!
Forgive, and call me back again!

“In that same hour I lost the glorious stole
Of innocence, that God’s own Hands had made;
And now the tempter poisoning all my soul,
I sit, in fig leaves and in skins arrayed:
I sit condemn’d, distress’d, forsaken;
Must till the ground whence I was taken
By labour’s daily sweat.
But Thou, That shalt hereafter come,
The Offspring of a Virgin-womb,
Have pity on me yet!
O turn on me those gracious eyes,
And call me back to Paradise!

“O glorious Paradise! O lovely clime!
O God-built mansions! Joy of every Saint!
Happy remembrance to all coming time!
Whisper, with all thy leaves, in cadence faint,
One prayer to Him Who made them all,
One prayer for Adam in his fall!—
That He, Who formed thy gates of yore,
Would bid those gates unfold once more
That I had closed by sin:
And let me taste that holy Tree
That giveth immortality
To them that dwell therein!
Or have I fallen so far from grace
That mercy hath for me no place?”

Adam sat right against the Eastern gate,
By many a storm of sad remembrance tost:
“O me! so ruined by the serpent’s hate!
O me! so glorious once, and now so lost!
So mad that bitter lot to choose!
Beguil’d of all I had to lose!
Must I then, gladness of my eyes,—
Must I then leave thee, Paradise,
And as an exile go?
And must I never cease to grieve
How once my God, at cool of eve,
Came down to walk below?
O Merciful! on Thee I call:
O Pitiful! forgive my Fall!”