st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

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1
As
HYMNS. 147
and how much less congenial it is to the spirit of
our own hymnody.
In the freedom which measured
prose allows, checked at the same time by the
necessity of correspondence between the hirmos
and its
troparia, we have something more nearly
analogous to the strophe and antistrophe of a Greek
choral ode, than to anything in modern poetry. The
most famous of these canons is that for Easter Day,
the first in order of those remaining to us under the
name of St.
John of Damascus. 1 It is a lasting
glory to any Christian poet to have furnished the
song of triumph and thanksgiving with which this
greatest of days in the Church s year is celebrated.
And in the Greek Church there are circumstances
which render the services on this day peculiarly
impressive. The Latin solemnities at the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre, with the wild excitement of the
sudden change from darkness to light the light of
innumerable tapers kindled in swift succession are
well known. Not less striking are the accompani
ments of Easter Day, as it is ushered in at Athens
for example, with the roll of drums, the firing of
cannon, the sudden blaze of countless lights, and the
chanting of what an eye-witness describes as a
glorious old hymn of victory."
The beginning of
this "glorious old hymn of the Easter victory," Hymn
printed in Lequien s edition, this is not divided into
odes, and thus does not present the outward appearance of
a canon. In the Pentecostarion, one of the numerous Greek
service-books, from which Dr. Neale translates it
is properly arranged, with the
Ectenoe,"
and the like.
L 2
intervening
(p. 880), it
"Catabasice,"