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

"
HYMNS. 149
called, as being without taste of blemish, and, as true God, He
is named perfect.
<E s a yearling lamb, our blessed Crown, Christ, was of v
His own accord sacrificed as the expiatory Pascha for all ;
and
again shone forth to us from the tomb,
Righteousness.
the beautiful Sun of
33 avid, the Divine Father, leapt and danced before the
mystic Ark ;
and the holy people of God, beholding the forthgiving
of the symbols. Let us rejoice in God, for that Christ,
as Almighty, hath arisen.
Of the other hymns of Damascene, those with
which English readers have been made most familiar,
are perhaps the Idiomela, or irregular verses, for
All Saints, beginning in Dr. Neale s beautiful ver
sion :
"
Those eternal bowers
Man hath never trod,"
and the
Stichera T of the Last Kiss." These last
are the solemn verses sung by the grave-side, in the
funeral service of the Eastern Church, while the
relatives and friends of the deceased advance and
give a parting kiss to the corpse before it is laid in
the earth ;
the priest doing so last of all. The open
ing lines, as rendered by the same translator, are as
follows :
"
Take the last kiss, the last for ever !
Yet render thanks amid your gloom
:
He, sever d from his home and kindred,
Is passing onwards to the tomb.
A sticheron is a verse, or short hymn, in measured prose,
1
much the same as a troparion before explained ;
the special
name given to the latter pointing out its relation to the model
verse, or hirmos.