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

1.&#160; My children have been slain; and my daughters that are without me,&#8212;their walls are overthrown, their children scattered,&#8212;and their holy places trodden down.&#160; R., Blessed is Thy chastisement!

2.&#160; The fowlers have taken, my doves out of my strongholds,&#8212;which quitted their nests, and fled to the caves;&#8212;in the net have they taken them.

3.&#160; After the manner of wax, that melts before the fire,&#8212;thus melted and dissolved, the bodies, of my sons before the heat&#8212;and the drought of my strongholds.

4.&#160; And instead of streams, of milk that used to flow,&#8212;for my sons and my little ones, milk fails the sucklings, and water the weaned children.

5.&#160; The suckling falls, from its mother and gasps,&#8212;because it cannot suck, nor can she give suck:&#8212;they breathe out their spirit and die.

6.&#160; How is it possible, that Thy grace can refrain&#8212;the welling of its stream, when it is not possible to restrain&#8212;the abundance of its flow?

7.&#160; And why has Thy grace, shut up its mercies,&#8212;and withheld its streams, from the people that cry,&#8212;for one to moisten their tongue?

8.&#160; And there was a pit, between them and their brethren;&#8212;like the rich man who cried, and there was none to answer,&#8212;to moisten his tongue.

9.&#160; And as into the midst of fire, the wretched ones were cast;&#8212;and heat in the midst of thirst, the fire was blowing,&#8212;and kindling upon them.

10.&#160; Their carcases were melted, and dissolved by the heat;&#8212;they that had thirsted gave in turn the earth to drink,&#8212;of the reek of their bodies.

11.&#160; And the fort that with thirst, had killed, its dwellers,&#8212;it drank in its turn of the flux from the corpses,&#8212;that were melted by thirst.

12.&#160; Who has seen a people&#8212;that were burning with thirst,&#8212;while there surrounded them a wall of water and they could not&#8212;moisten their tongue!

13.&#160; Surely with the judgment of Sodom, were my beloved judged,&#8212;and my children smitten, with the torment of Sodom;&#8212;though that was but for one day.

14.&#160; The torment of fire, though it be for one hour, O my Lord,&#8212;in lingering thirst, is a lingering death, and a subtle punishment.

15.&#160; After my sorrows, O my Lord, and my bitter sufferings,&#8212;this is the best comfort, wherewith Thou hast comforted me,&#8212;that Thou hast multiplied my afflictions.

16.&#160; The medicine that I hoped, it is sorrow decreed;&#8212;the binding up that I looked for, it is bitter calamity,&#8212;that it seeks to work for me.

17.&#160; And whereas I hoped to escape, from the midst of the storm;&#8212;worse for me is the storm in it, even in the harbour,&#8212;than that in the sea.

18.&#160; Whereas I thought in my folly, that I should anchor and escape&#8212;from the midst of the Gulf; my sins have cast me back&#8212;again into the midst of it.

19.&#160; Look, O my Lord, on my limbs, how the swords are thick in me,&#8212;and have left their mark on my arms; and the scars of the spears,&#8212;are planted in my sides!

20.&#160; Tears in mine eyes, and in my ears ill rumours,&#8212;wailing in my mouth, and mourning in my heart!&#8212;Add no more, O my Lord, to me!