COSMAS OF JERUSALEM.

21

Son of David is born to destroy that ravening wolf who, in the beginning, slew Adam, then pastured as a stainless lamb in Paradise. Old men and ancient women throng out of the city of David with greetings; young men, maidens, wives, and mothers, group around Him who has come to lend a sanction and sacredness to every relation of domestic and social life. Ephraim's treatment of his subject is nearly unique, and altogether idiosyncratic. On some other occasion we may hope to improve our acquaintance with him.

Cosmas, of Jerusalem, is probably the most learned of the Greek ecclesiastical poets; and “his fondness for types," says the late Dr. Neale, "his boldness in their application, and his love of aggregating them, make him the oriental Adam of St. Victor," "His compositions are tolerably numerous; and he seems to have taken pleasure in competing with St. John Damascenus (his fosterbrother) as in the Nativity, the Epiphany, the Transfiguration, where the canons of both are given." Cosmas, or St. Cosmas for he was canonised, and his day commemorated by the Eastern Church on the 14th of October—was Bishop of Maiuma, near Gaza; a dignity to which he suffered himself reluctantly to be consecrated by John, Patriarch of Jerusalem. He died in a good old age about the year 760.

Cosmas has left a canon for Christmas Day, ɛiç τñν ¤ɛoyovíav, a long poem, of which the original is given in Daniel's “Thesaurus Hymnologicus," and which is translated in the “Hymns of the Eastern Church.” Of the several odes into which Dr. Neale has divided this poem, which he is inclined to think is, on the whole, the finest of all the Canons of Cosmas, the first is as follows, prefixed by the opening lines of the original :

Χριστὸς γεννᾶται, δοξάσατε

Χριστὸς ἐξ οὐρανῶν, ἀπαντήσατε,
Χριστὸς ἐπὶ γῆς ̔υψώθητε.

Christ is born! Tell forth His fame!
Christ from Heaven! His love proclaim!
Christ on earth! Exalt His name:

Sing to the Lord, O world, with exultation!
Break forth in glad thanksgiving, every nation!
For He hath triumphed gloriously!

Man, in God's own image made,

Man, by Satan's wiles betrayed,
Man, on whom corruption preyed,

Shut out from hope of life and of salvation,
To-day CHRIST maketh him a new creation,
For He hath triumphed gloriously!

For the Maker, when his foe

Wrought the creature death and woe,

Bowed the Heavens, and came below,*

And, in the Virgin's womb, His dwelling making,
Became true MAN, man's very nature taking;
For He hath triumphed gloriously!

He, the Wisdom, WORD, and Might,
GOD, and SON, and Light of light,

Undiscovered by the sight

Of earthly monarch, or infernal spirit,

Incarnate was, that we might Heaven inherit :

For He hath triumphed gloriously!

Our next representative poem is taken from a hymnwriter of the Latin Church, and from a Latin original, which may be consulted in Bässler's "Auswahl Altchristlicher Lieder"; in Daniel's "Thesaurus," or, in a slightly varied form, in Archbishop Trench's "Sacred Latin Poetry." The author, Johannes Mauburnus, who was of the very latest of medieval hymnographers, was born at Brussels in 1460, and, after fulfilling several dignities in the church, died Abbat of the Cloister of Livry, in the neighbourhood of Paris, in 1502. The hymn in question is derived from

* The reference is, of course, to Psalm xviii., 9: "He bowed the Heavens alsoand came down."

HYMN OF MAUBURNUS.

23

the "Rosetum Spirituale," and taken from a longer poem of thirteen stanzas, commencing:

Eja mea anima

Bethlehem eamus.

The three stanzas translated below, have long formed a Christmas hymn, which was in favourite use in its original Latin in the early reformed churches. It is now, Bässler informs us, to be met with in various Protestant "Gesangbücher," in an old German version, beginning with the line

Warum liegt im Krippelein,

which represents the Heu! quid jaces stabulo of Mauburnus. English versions are not of the rarest occurrence. We take one of the latest, done by the Rev. Dr. Kynaston, and published in his "Occasional Hymns."

Swathed, and feebly wailing,
Wherefore art Thou laid,
All thy glory veiling

In the manger's shade?
King, and yet no royal

Purple decks thy breast;
Courtiers mute and loyal
Bend not o'er thy rest.

Sinner, here I sought thee,
Here I made my home,
All my worth I brought thee,
Vile am I become ;

All thy joys redressing

On my birthday morn,
Give my GODHEAD'S Blessing,
In a stable born.

Thousand, thousand praises,

JESUS, for Thy love,
While my spirit gazes

With the Host above;

Glory in the highest
For Thy wondrous birth,
Lowly where Thou liest,

Praise and love on earth.

We quote a Sonnet-an explanation of a solemn thought from one of the Fathers translated by Archdeacon Churton, in the "Lyra Messianica," from the Spanish of Luis de Gongora, born at Cordova, in 1562. He was of a very distinguished family; studied at Salamanca, and took holy orders; was made chaplain to the King, and prebendary of the church of Cordova, in which preferment he died in 1689. In his life-time he published nothing. His posthumous works consist of Sonnets, Reliques, Heroic Verses, a Comedy, a Tragedy, and Miscellanies; which have been often published with notes and commentaries equal to the pretensions of a bard whom the Spaniards partially reckon as the prince of all their poets:

To hang transfixed upon the bitter cross,

To bear Thy bleeding brows all pierced with thorn,
For frail man's glory to abide foul scorn,
And for his gain to welcome deepest loss-
This was a hero's deed. But to be born
In such poor abject lodging, such scant room,
A doorless shed in icy blasts forlorn,

So low to stoop. Who from such height didst come—
Oh, what a choice was this, my Sovereign LORD?
What strength did GODHEAD to Thy cradle lend
To bear that outrage of cold winter's breath?

Not more Thy bloody sweat, or body gored:
For greater far the distance to descend

From GOD to man, than from poor man to Death.

As we turn to our own lyrists, we are proudly conscious of an inexhaustible wealth of Christmas verse; proudly, and yet at present, rather embarrassingly. We know how little room we have left for further quotations, and how countless a number of authors must be left without so much as mention or allusion; albeit some of these are amongst the chief glories of our literature. It is fortunate,

THE SOUL A SHEPHERD.

25

however, that such poems as we have still to present, do not demand words of introduction at our hands. "Holy George Herbert," for instance, may safely be trusted without comment to contribute his flower to our anthology. He thus sings of "Christmas":

All after pleasures as I rid one day,

My horse and I, both tired, body and mind,
With full cry of affections, quite astray;

I took up in the next inn I could find.

There when I came, whom found I but my dear,
My dearest Lord, expecting till the grief
Of pleasures brought me to Him, ready there
To be all passengers' most sweet relief?

O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light,
Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger;
Since my dark soul and brutish is Thy right,
To man of all beasts be not Thou a stranger:
Furnish and deck my soul, that Thou mayest have
A better lodging, than a rack, or grave.

The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?
My God, no hymn for Thee?

My soul's a shepherd too: a flock it feeds
Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.

The pasture is Thy word; the streams, Thy grace,
Enriching all the place.

Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers

Out-sing the daylight hours.

Then we will chide the sun for letting night

Take up his place and right,

We sing one common Lord; where fore He should
Himself the candle hold.

I will go searching, till I find a sun

Shall stay, till we have done;

A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly,

As frost-nipt suns look sadly.

Then we will sing, and shine all our own day,

And one another pay:

His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine,

Till even his beams sing, and my music shine.