Hymns

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–8.29 · 9.1–10.1

1. 1.1Synesius turns his lyre from love poetry to a hymn to God, setting aside strength, beauty, wealth, and fame.
2. 1.29The poet asks for a quiet life with wisdom and just enough to live on, and feels a divine song stirring in him.
3. 1.52God the first Monad, beyond being, unfolds into a Triad; the poet then stops, refusing to reveal the higher mysteries.
4. 1.78The divine Mind is shared out undivided to stars, angels, and human souls, and the human mind, sunk in matter, forgets its origin but keeps some light.
5. 1.102Blessed is the soul that escapes matter and climbs toward God, who comes to meet it with outstretched hands and a guiding ray.
6. 1.128The poet urges his soul to rise and be united with the Father.
7. 2.1A morning hymn to God who set the heavens in order, from the moon's sphere up past the stars to Mind and the silent realm beyond, where one Source shines as a threefold Form.
8. 2.27Father, Son (Wisdom), and holy Breath shine as one; from them come the angels and, down at the level of matter, the daemons.
9. 2.55God is the root of all things, beyond every opposite; the poet hails him and asks for wisdom and a calm life free of poverty and of the harm of wealth.
10. 2.83The poet prays to be kept from disease, passion, and care so that his mind may rise and celebrate the mysteries of the Son.
11. 3.1The poet calls his soul to quiet its passions and offer God a hymn as a bloodless sacrifice, sung everywhere and at every hour.
12. 3.29Sun, moon, and stars witness the poet's prayers; he has gone as a suppliant to God's sanctuaries, to the mountains, and into the Libyan desert.
13. 3.55In the untouched desert the purified soul offers its hymn, and the poet calls all nature to silence.
14. 3.82The poet bids the serpent, the daemon of matter, to sink away, asks the Father to drive off the soul-devouring hounds, and commits his prayer to God's ministers.
15. 3.111The poet asks pardon for daring to speak of God, whose brightness no eye can bear, so that the mind turns instead to the first-appearing Form.
16. 3.138The poet heaps titles on the Father: self-fathered, fatherless, Mind before being, Root of the worlds, beyond gods and minds.
17. 3.166God is Source, Root, Monad, Mind, the One in and before all things, and the initiate mind can only circle the ineffable depth with words.
18. 3.191The Father begets the Son, Wisdom, without loss or division; the poet hymns God as Monad and Triad at once.
19. 3.217The Father's Will, the Spirit, stands between Father and Son; none of the three may be called second or third, and the Son appears with the Father by the Father's Will.
20. 3.245The eternal generation is beyond time; the poet rebukes those who speculate boldly on it and praises the Father who guards the holy from deceit.
21. 3.270All the ranks of spiritual beings, the intellectual powers and the minds of the stars, sing God's praise.
22. 3.289Angels, heroes, souls, and Nature herself praise God, who governs Nature with his life-giving breath and is the Nature of natures.
23. 3.312God sustains the world of birth and decay, an image of eternity, so that even its lowest parts share in life through an everlasting cycle.
24. 3.333All of nature, from the heavens to plants, beasts, birds, and fish, joins in one harmony of praise to God.
25. 3.358The poet asks God to look on his weak soul at prayer in Libya, to give it upward-leading light, and to keep him in gentle circumstances while he lives in the body.
26. 3.386The poet asks to be free of cares that steal leisure from God, and offers his hymn to the Father and to the Son, Wisdom, who comes forth from the Father yet remains in him.
27. 3.408The Son governs all things down to the earth and relieves mortals' griefs; the poet now pays God a debt of thanks from his years in Thrace beside the imperial palace.
28. 3.436In Constantinople the poet toiled and wept for his homeland and prayed in every church for the success of his mission.
29. 3.459The poet sought the help of the saints honored in Thrace and at Chalcedon, who shared his prayers, and God rescued his troubled homeland.
30. 3.482God restored the poet's strength and brought his mission to a happy end; he asks that the gains be kept for the Libyans and that he be freed from toil, disease, and care.
31. 3.510The poet asks to be spared both riches and poverty, which drag the soul to earth, and prays for the light of wisdom and the path to God.
32. 3.538The poet asks for God's seal to drive off the daemons, for a sound body and pure spirit, and for release from the bonds of matter, since he carries in him a spark of the divine mind.
33. 3.564The soul, God's daughter, came down to serve on earth but has become matter's slave; it still keeps a little sight of God and begs for pity.
34. 3.593The poet asks God to kindle the seed of light in him and set him where neither earth nor fate can drag him back.
35. 3.619The soul is to bear the Father's seal, which frightens the daemons and opens the gates of light, and the poet turns away from earthly life.
36. 3.648The poet renounces worldly ambition and pleasure, since matter always mixes sweet with bitter and every earthly delight brings its opposite.
37. 3.675Only God gives unmixed good; the poet, having tasted the snare of matter, flees toward the Father and asks for wings to rise.
38. 3.701The soul, a heavenly drop poured out on earth, asks to be freed from the passions and returned to its source, to sing with the heavenly choir.
39. 3.730The hymn closes by repeating the prayer for gentle circumstances while the poet remains in the body.
40. 4.1At every hour of day and night the poet sings God as healer and giver of wisdom, asking to be kept pure of earthly care so as to hymn the hidden root of all.
41. 4.28The poet calls the whole world to silence for his hymn and bids the daemons of dens and tombs to flee.
42. 4.51The poet asks the angels to carry his prayers and hails the Father with titles of supremacy, from whom the Spirit comes to give life to the visible world.
43. 4.80The poet hymns the Father in word and silence, the Son together with the Father, and the Holy Spirit as the Father's fruitful Will standing between Father and Son.
44. 4.106The Spirit stands between Father and Son as God from God; God is Monad and Triad, and the Word, begotten by the Father's Mind, stays in the Father while governing the worlds.
45. 4.134The Word, first-born from the Father, is the root of all creation; through him all nature receives life, and the heavens move at his command.
46. 4.160The Son holds the heavens and the ages together and gives every rank of being, in heaven, air, earth, and below the earth, its work and its life.
47. 4.186Through the Son, life and cohesion flow from the Father down through the spiritual worlds to every creature, and the visible world receives its form from the intellectual world.
48. 4.213The sun is the visible image of the intellectual Son; the poet kneels before the unknowable Father and asks for pity.
49. 4.242The poet asks God to drive the earthly daemon, the power of the passions, away from every part of his life.
50. 4.264The poet asks for a guardian angel to watch over his body, spirit, soul, prayers, and works.
51. 4.286The hymn ends with a prayer that after death the soul may rise, free of matter, to God, its source.
52. 5.1A hymn to Christ, born of a virgin by the Father's counsel, light from the Father, creator of the world and Savior of humankind.
53. 5.29The poet asks Christ for health, persuasive speech, a fame worthy of his ancestors, and a pure life that leads his soul back to God, as he hymns Father, Son, and Spirit.
54. 5.58The hymn ends by hailing the Father as source of the Son, the Son as form and seal of the Father, and the Spirit as center of both.
55. 6.1A hymn to the Son, only-begotten from the only Father, who governs heaven, angels, and daemons, gives the Spirit to the earth, and frees mortals from death; the poet asks for calm and health.
56. 6.30The poet asks to be spared the harms of wealth and poverty and given good repute and leisure to cultivate wisdom.
57. 7.1Synesius claims to be the first to hymn Jesus to the lyre and tells of the Magi, astonished at the child, who bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
58. 7.30Frankincense for God, gold for the King, myrrh for the tomb; Christ cleansed earth, sea, air, and the underworld, going to Hades as helper of the dead.
59. 8.1The poet asks Christ for a life free of harm, wisdom, health, and a good old age, and thanks him for raising his brother from the point of death.
60. 8.29The poet prays for his children, his household, and his wife, that their marriage bed stay pure and faithful, and for his soul after death.
61. 9.1Christ, born of the Virgin, drove the serpent from Paradise, came down to earth in a mortal body and down to Hades, which trembled, and freed the souls of the holy.
62. 9.27At Christ's ascension the daemons of the air trembled while the heavens, stars, moon, and sun rejoiced and acknowledged him as the source of their light.
63. 9.54Christ passes beyond the visible heavens to the silent intellectual realm, where there is no time or decay, only ageless Eternity.
64. 10.1A short closing prayer: the sinful writer asks Christ to remember him, free him from inborn passions, and let him see his glory and sing to him with the Father and the Spirit.