O UNITY OF THREEFOLD LIGHT.

τριφεγγής Μονὰς θεαρχική.

[From the Canon for Sunday of the Second Tone.]

O Unity of Threefold Light,

Send out Thy loveliest ray,

And scatter our transgressions' night,

And turn it into day!

Make us those temples, pure and fair,

Thy glory loveth well,

The spotless tabernacles, where

Thou may'st vouchsafe to dwell!

The glorious hosts of peerless might

That ever see Thy Face,

Thou mak'st the mirrors of Thy Light,

The vessels of Thy grace:

Thou, when their wond'rous strain they

weave,

Hast pleasure in the lay:

Deign thus our praises to receive,

Albeit from lips of clay!

And yet Thyself they cannot know,
Nor pierce the veil of light

That hides Thee from theThrones below,
As in profoundest night :

How then can mortal accents frame
Due tribute to their King?

Thou, only, while we praise Thy Name,
Forgive us as we sing!

Beyond Metrophanes, it will not be necessary to carry our translations. The following names may, however, be mentioned.

Euthymius.

+ A.D. 910.

Euthymius, usually known as Syngelus, (the same as Syncellus, the confidential Deacon of the Patriarch of Constantinople,) who died about 916, is the author of a Penitential Canon to S. Mary, which is highly esteemed in the East. It would scarcely, however, be possible to make even a Cento from it, which should be acceptable to the English reader.

Leo VI.

+ A.D. 917.

Our next name is that of a Royal Poet. Leo VI., the Philosopher, who reigned from 886 to 917, left behind him the Idiomela, or detached stanzas, on the Resurrection, sung at Lauds. They are better than might have been expected from an Imperial author, and the troubler of the Eastern Church by a fourth marriage.

The same thing may be said of the Exaposteilaria of his son, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, whose life lasted till 959.

John Mauropus.

+ A.D. 1060.

John Mauropus, Metropolitan of Euchaïta, sometimes called the last of the Greek Fathers, left a number of hymns, printed at Eton in 1610: and if not boasting much poetical fire, at least graced with a gentle and Isocratean eloquence. As they have not been employed by the Church, they claim no further notice here.

With this Metropolitan, Greek Hymnology well-nigh ceased: at least the only other name that need be mentioned is that of Philotheus, Patriarch of Constantinople, who died in 1376. This man, the warm supporter of the dogma of the Uncreated Light, was the composer of several stanzas for Orthodoxy Sunday, and the Canon for July 16, on the Holy Fathers: both in the very worst taste.