The Pearl : Seven Hymns on the Faith by Saint Ephraim the Syrian

[Benedict]

Saint Ephraim the Syrian, Doctor of the Church, Deacon, hymnographer, friend of Saint Basil the Great

Prayer of Saint Ephraim
O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, meddling, lust of power, and idle talk.
But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to thy servant.
Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own sins and not to judge my brother, for thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen.
O God, be gracious to me, a sinner.

Hymn I.

1.  On a certain day a pearl did I take up, my brethren;
I saw in it mysteries pertaining to the Kingdom; semblances and types of the Majesty;
it became a fountain, and I drank out of it mysteries of the Son.
I put it, my brethren, upon the palm of my hand, that I might examine it: 
 I went to look at it on one side, and it proved faces on all sides. 
I found out that the Son was incomprehensible, since He is wholly Light.
In its brightness I beheld the Bright One Who cannot be clouded, and in its pureness a great mystery, even the Body of our Lord which is well-refined: 
in its undividedness I saw the Truth which is undivided. It was so that I saw there its pure conception,--the Church, and the Son within her. 
The cloud was the likeness of her that bare Him, and her type the heaven, since there shone forth from her His gracious Shining.
I saw therein His trophies, and His victories, and His crowns.  I saw His helpful and overflowing graces, and His hidden things with His revealed things.

2.  It was greater to me than the ark, for I was astonied thereat: 
I saw therein folds without shadow to them because it was a daughter of light, types vocal without tongues,
utterances of mysteries without lips, a silent harp that without voice gave out melodies.
The trumpet falters and the thunder mutters; be not thou daring then; leave things hidden, take things revealed. 
Thou hast seen in the clear sky a second shower; the clefts of thine ears, as from the clouds, they are filled with interpretations.
And as that manna which alone filled the people, in the place of pleasant meats, with its pleasantnesses,
so does this pearl fill me in the place of books, and the reading thereof, and the explanations thereof.
And when I asked if there were yet other mysteries, it had no mouth for me that I might hear from, neither any ears wherewith it might hear me. 
O thou thing without senses, whence I have gained new senses!

3.  It answered me and said, "The daughter of the sea am I, the illimitable sea! 
And from that sea whence I came up it is that there is a mighty treasury of mysteries in my bosom! 
Search thou out the sea, but search not out the Lord of the sea!
"I have seen the divers who came down after me, when astonied,
so that from the midst of the sea they returned to the dry ground; for a few moments they sustained it not. 
Who would linger and be searching on into the depths of the Godhead?
"The waves of the Son are full of blessings, and with mischiefs too.
Have ye not seen, then, the waves of the sea, which if a ship should struggle with them would break her to pieces,
and if she yield herself to them, and rebel not against them, then she is preserved? 
In the sea all the Egyptians were choked, though they scrutinised it not, and, without prying,
the Hebrews too were overcome upon the dry land, and how shall ye be kept alive? 
And the men of Sodom were licked up by the fire, and how shall ye prevail?
"At these uproars the fish in the sea were moved,   and Leviathan also. 
Have ye then a heart of stone that ye read these things and run into these errors? 
O great fear that justice also should be so long silent!"

4.  "Searching is mingled with thanksgiving, and whether of the two will prevail? 
The incense of praise riseth along with the fume of disputation from the tongue, and unto which shall we hearken? 
Prayer and prying [come] from one mouth, and which shall we listen to?
"For three days was Jonah a neighbour [of mine] in the sea:  the living things that were in the sea were affrighted, [saying,]
 "Who shall flee from God?  Jonah fled, and ye are obstinate at your scrutiny of Him!"

[Benedict]

Hymn II. 1.  Whereunto art thou like?  Let thy stillness speak to one that hears; with silent mouth speak with us: 
 for whoso hears the stammerings of thy silence, to him thy type utters its silent cry concerning our Redeemer.
Thy mother is a virgin of the sea; though he took her not [to wife]: she fell into his bosom, though he knew her not;
 she conceived thee near him, though he did not know her. 
Do thou, that art a type, reproach the Jewish women that have thee hung upon them. 
Thou art the only progeny of all forms which art like to the Word on High, Whom singly the Most High begot. 
The engraven forms seem to be the type of created things above. 
This visible offspring of the invisible womb is a type of great things.
Thy goodly conception was without seed, and without wedlock was thy pure generation, and without brethren was thy single birth.
Our Lord had brethren and yet not brethren, since He was an Only-Begotten.  O solitary one, thou type exact of the Only-Begotten!
There is a type of thine in the crown of kings, [wherein] thou hast brothers and sisters.
Goodly gems are thy brethren, with beryls and unions as thy companions:  may gold be as it were thy kinsman, may there be unto the King of kings a crown from thy well-beloved ones! 
When thou camest up from the sea, that living tomb, thou didst cry out.  Let me have a goodly assemblage of brethren, relatives, and kinsmen. 
As the wheat is in the stalk, so thou art in the crown with princes:  and it is a just restoration to thee, as if of a pledge, that from that depth thou shouldest be exalted to a goodly eminence. 
Wheat the stalk bears in the field; thee the head of the king upon his chariot carries about.
O daughter of the water, who hast left sea, wherein thou wert born, and art gone up to the dry land, wherein thou art beloved: 
for men have loved and seized and adorned themselves with thee, like as they did that Offspring Whom the Gentiles loved and crowned themselves withal.
It is by the mystery of truth that Leviathan is trodden down of mortals:  the divers put him off, and put on Christ. 
In the sacrament of oil did the Apostles steal Thee away, and came up. 
They snatched their souls from his mouth, bitter as it was.

Thy Nature is like a silent lamb in its sweetness, of which if a man is to lay hold, he lifts it in a crucial form by its ears, as it was on Golgotha. 
He cast out abundantly all His gleams upon them that looked upon Him.
2.  Shadowed forth in thy beauty is the beauty of the Son, Who clothed Himself with suffering when the nails passed through Him. 
The awl passed in thee since they handled thee roughly, as they did His hands; and because He suffered He reigned, as by thy sufferings thy beauty increased.
And if they showed no pity upon thee, neither did they love thee: still suffer as thou mightest, thou hast come to reign! 
Simon Peter showed pity on the Rock; whoso hath smitten it, is himself thereby overcome; it is by reason of Its suffering that Its beauty hath adorned the height and the depth.

[Benedict]

Hymn III.
1.  Thou dost not hide thyself in thy bareness, O pearl!  With the love of thee is the merchant ravished also, for he strips off his garments; not to cover thee, [seeing] thy clothing is thy light, thy garment is thy brightness, O thou that art bared! Thou art like Eve who was clothed with nakedness.  Cursed be he that deceived her and stripped her and left her.  The serpent cannot strip off thy glory.  In the mysteries whose type thou art, women are clothed with Light in Eden.
2.  Very glistening are the pearls of Ethiopia, as it is written, Who gave thee to Ethiopia [the land] of black men. He that gave light to the Gentiles, both to the Ethiopians and unto the Indians did His bright beams reach. The eunuch of Ethiopia upon his chariot saw Philip:  the Lamb of Light met the dark man from out of the water.  While he was reading, the Ethiopian was baptised and shone with joy, and journeyed on! He made disciples and taught, and out of black men he made men white. And the dark Ethiopic women became pearls for the Son; He offered them up to the Father, as a glistening crown from the Ethiopians.
3.  The Queen of Sheba was a sheep that had come into the place of wolves; the lamp of truth did Solomon give her, who also married her when he fell away.  She was enlightened and went away, but they were dark as their manner was. The bright spark which went down home with that blessed [Queen], held on its shining amid the darkness, till the new Day-spring came.  The bright spark met with this shining, and illumined the place.
4.  There are in the sea divers fishes of many cubits, and with all their greatness they are very small; but by thy littleness the crown is made great, like as the Son, by whose littleness Adam was made great. For the head is thy crown intended:  for the eye thy beauty, for the ear thy goodliness.  Come up from the sea, thou neighbour to the dry land, and come and sojourn by the [seat of] hearing.  Let the ear love the word of life as it loveth thee! In the ear is the word, and without it is the pearl.  Let it as being warned by thee, by thee get wisdom, and be warned by the word of truth.  Be thou its mirror:  the beauty of the Word in thine own beauty shall it see:  in thee it shall learn how precious is the Word on High!  The ear is the leaf:  the flesh is the tree, and thou in the midst of it are a fruit of light, and to the womb that brings forth Light, thou art a type that points. Thee He used as a parable of that kingdom, O pearl! as He did the virgins that entered into it, five in number, clothed with the light of their lamps!  To thee are those bright ones like, thou that art clad in light!
5.  Who would give a pearl to the daughter of the poor?  For when it hangs on her, it becomes her not.  Gain without price that faith, all of which becomes all the limbs of men.  But for no gold would a lady exchange her pearl. It were a great disgrace if thou shouldst throw thy pearl away into the mire for nought! In the pearl of time let us behold that of eternity; for it is in the purse, or in the seal, or in the treasury.  Within the gate there are other gates with their locks and keys.  Thy pearl hath the High One sealed up as taking account of all.