Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume XIII/Ephraim the Syrian and Aphrahat/Nisibene Hymns/Hymn LXII

1. Lo! Death, the King of silence, complains, my brethren:&#160; that we have filled his abode with the wailing, of Hope cut off.&#8212;2. R., To Him be great praise Who comest down, to us here below:&#160; and suffered and rose again and in His Body, raises our bodies!&#8212;3. While we weep like madmen, at the gates of Sheol:&#160; hearken what Death says, reproaching us.&#8212;4. It shames me, says Death, that ye, have overcome me:&#160; the half of Sheol suffices not, to contain your slain.&#8212;5. For alien corpses together, lie heaped in Sheol:&#160; there are two divisions there, the dead, the slain.&#8212;6. Whereas I should complain that ye have wronged me, lo! ye are weeping:&#160; ye have burst the gate of Sheol, and done me hurt.&#8212;7. For ye are like unto an infant, which while yet weeping:&#160; laughs again as ye also, over your dead.&#8212;8. For there is no discretion in your mourning, and no understanding:&#160; in your laughter&#8212;for to me ye seem like, to a weaned babe.&#8212;9. One hour weeping and wailing, and after a little:&#160; both jesting and wantonness, as of children.&#8212;10. For ye are unable to become, perfect men:&#160; that weep not yea and laugh not, as the discreet.&#8212;11. Touching your books we are grieved, that they have toiled over them:&#160; who should read them unto you, even the divine Scriptures.&#8212;12. The readers are crying aloud, for ye are deaf:&#160; this their crying proves concerning you, that ye are as stocks.&#8212;13. For since the reader and the interpreter, are crying aloud:&#160; your ears therefore are heavy, or else your hearts.&#8212;14. For if there were with you an ear, open to persuasion:&#160; it were meet to hear little, and to do much.&#8212;15. But because its hearing is closed, whoso knocks at it:&#160; the voice returns back to him, who sent it forth.&#8212;16. There is no crying with me of mine, I am not deaf:&#160; none that reads or interprets for me, I am not dull.&#8212;17. The breath that is from Him commands me, sons the God of truth:&#160; and with the command there follows, also the fulfilment.&#8212;18. With me is no holding back, no turnings aside:&#160; I wot no arrow even, could outstrip me.&#8212;19. But your voices are scorned by me, when ye are weeping:&#160; over the graves of your departed, in the cutting off of hope.&#8212;20. Were it possible or permitted, when ye are weeping:&#160; I would go forth and tell you, to your faces.&#8212;21. &#8220;I am endeavouring to give, an account of the death:&#160; and your voices disturb me, that I err in my count.&#8221;&#8212;22. Ye nations, let not your understanding, become childish:&#160; like that nation whose intelligence, was never great.&#8212;23. In which prudence bestows not itself, as in a fool:&#160; for its thoughts are darkness, without discernment.&#8212;24. For your infants and your sons, in the resurrection:&#160; they shall be foremost to come forth, as the first fruits&#8212;25. Then after them shall come the just, as victorious:&#160; last shall come forth the sinner, as put to shame.&#8212;26. For although in the twinkling of an eye, they be quickened:&#160; yet is it in order that their ranks, come forth from Sheol.&#8212;27. Prophets come forth and Apostles, and holy Fathers:&#160; following them in due array, according to command.&#8212;28. Lo! that which now is sown, in random mixture:&#160; is yielded back in great order, as garden-herbs.&#8212;29. For though one in the sowing, should mix all seeds:&#160; that which is earlier than its fellow, prevents its fellow,&#8212;30. And not as their going down was confused, so disordered shall be:&#160; their coming up from the earth, for its order is fixed.&#8212;31. Lo! I have been against myself, in what I have said:&#160; for secret things which ye comprehended not, from me ye have learned.&#8212;32. Instead of the tears that profit not, which are at the tomb:&#160; pour them forth in your prayer, in the midst of the Church.&#8212;33. For to the dead there is profit in these, and likewise to the living:&#160; weep not with a weeping that afflicts, both dead and living!