The Nisibene Hymns 10Hymn X.

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

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

3. After the manner of wax, that melts before the fire,--thus melted and dissolved, the bodies, of my sons before the heat--and the drought of my strongholds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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