{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/213/2130187.htm","path":"chr/ecf/213/2130187.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/213/2130187.htm","text":"p. 178 Hymn X.\n1. My children have been slain; and my daughters that are without me,\u2014their walls are overthrown, their children scattered,\u2014and their holy places trodden down. R., Blessed is Thy chastisement!\n2. The fowlers have taken, my doves out of my strongholds,\u2014which quitted their nests, and fled to the caves;\u2014in the net have they taken them.\n3. After the manner of wax, that melts before the fire,\u2014thus melted and dissolved, the bodies, of my sons before the heat\u2014and the drought of my strongholds.\n4. And instead of streams, of milk that used to flow,\u2014for my sons and my little ones, milk fails the sucklings, and water the weaned children.\n5. The suckling falls, from its mother and gasps,\u2014because it cannot suck, nor can she give suck:\u2014they breathe out their spirit and die.\n6. How is it possible, that Thy grace can refrain\u2014the welling of its stream, when it is not possible to restrain\u2014the abundance of its flow?\n7. And why has Thy grace, shut up its mercies,\u2014and withheld its streams, from the people that cry,\u2014for one to moisten their tongue?\n8. And there was a pit, between them and their brethren;\u2014like the rich man who cried, and there was none to answer,\u2014to moisten his tongue.\n9. And as into the midst of fire, the wretched ones were cast;\u2014and heat in the midst of thirst, the fire was blowing,\u2014and kindling upon them.\n10. Their carcases were melted, and dissolved by the heat;\u2014they that had thirsted gave in turn the earth to drink,\u2014of the reek of their bodies.\n11. And the fort that with thirst, had killed, its dwellers,\u2014it drank in its turn of the flux from the corpses,\u2014that were melted by thirst.\n12. Who has seen a people\u2014that were burning with thirst,\u2014while there surrounded them a wall of water and they could not\u2014moisten their tongue!\n13. Surely with the judgment of Sodom, were my beloved judged,\u2014and my children smitten, with the torment of Sodom;\u2014though that was but for one day.\n14. The torment of fire, though it be for one hour, O my Lord,\u2014in lingering thirst, is a lingering death, and a subtle punishment.\n15. After my sorrows, O my Lord, and my bitter sufferings,\u2014this is the best comfort, wherewith Thou hast comforted me,\u2014that Thou hast multiplied my afflictions.\n16. The medicine that I hoped, it is sorrow decreed;\u2014the binding up that I looked for, it is bitter calamity,\u2014that it seeks to work for me.\n17. And whereas I hoped to escape, from the midst of the storm;\u2014worse for me is the storm in it, even in the harbour,\u2014than that in the sea.\n18. Whereas I thought in my folly, that I should anchor and escape\u2014from the midst of the Gulf; my sins have cast me back\u2014again into the midst of it.\n19. Look, O my Lord, on my limbs, how the swords are thick in me,\u2014and have left their mark on my arms; and the scars of the spears,\u2014are planted in my sides!\n20. Tears in mine eyes, and in my ears ill rumours,\u2014wailing in my mouth, and mourning in my heart!\u2014Add no more, O my Lord, to me!","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. XIII: Selections from the Hymns and Homilies of Ephraim the Syrian and from the Demonstrations of Aphrahat the Persian Sage.: Hymn X.","type":"page"}