Synesius' Third Hymn to the Father and Son

Synesius of Cyrene · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 10 pages

Ten pages presenting the third hymn of Synesius of Cyrene in *two English translations printed side by side down the page* — Alan Stevenson's rhymed version of 1865 in the left column and Augustine Fitzgerald's freer prose version of 1930 in the right — so that the reader can follow both renderings of each passage at once.

The hymn opens by rousing the poet's own soul to sacred songs and laying to rest the stings born of matter, offering what Stevenson calls the unbloody Host and Fitzgerald a bloodless offering, libations of poesy, woven as a crown for the King of gods. The invocation then sweeps across the world, naming the places from which God is called upon — over the wide sea, in distant isles, over mainlands, in cities and on the craggy mountains, wherever the poet's two feet come to rest. What follows is a night hymn: the soul soaring upward by night in tuneful flight, and hymns lifted at pale dawn, at burning noon and at sweet evening. The witnesses summoned are astronomical rather than human — the beams of the glittering stars, the courses of the moon, and the mighty witness of the sun, called the holy guardian of pure spirits and president over the pure stars. The movement of the whole is upward and away: the poet lifts a weary wing that turns from far-reaching matter, leaves the deep chaos behind and advances to God's dwelling-place. Having the two versions in parallel is the reason to prefer this file — the rhymed Victorian text reads as a hymn, the later one much closer to the Greek, and the differences between them are visible line by line.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.5 MB, 10 pages)