True poetry -- pure and simple 1 No way is hard where there is a simple heart. 2 Nor is there any wound where the thoughts are upright: 3 Nor is there any storm in the depth of the illuminated thought: 4 Where one is surrounded on every side by beauty, there is nothing that is divided. 5 The likeness of what is below is that which is above; for everything is above: what is below is nothing but the imagination of those that are without knowledge. 6 [Grace has been revealed for your salvation. Believe and live and be saved.]1 Hallelujah.
3 Odes of Solomon
Song Cycle by Alan Hovhaness (1911 - 2000)
1. No way is hard  [sung text checked 1 time]
Language: English
Authorship:
- by James Rendel Harris (1852 - 1941), "Ode 34", appears in The Forgotten Books of Eden, in The Odes of Solomon, first published 1926
Based on:
- a text in Aramaic (ܪܡܝܐ) by Bible or other Sacred Texts , from the Greek, 1st century A.D.? [text unavailable]
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View original text (without footnotes)1 omitted by Hovhaness.
Researcher for this page: Jean Nandi
2. As the work of the husbandman  [sung text checked 1 time]
Language: English
The beauty of God's creation. 1 As the work of the husbandman is the ploughshare: and the work of the steersman is the guidance of the ship: 2 So also my work is the Psalm of the Lord: my craft and my occupation are in His praises: [3 Because His love bath nourished my heart, and even to my lips His fruits He poured out. 4 For my love is the Lord, and therefore I will sing unto Him: 5 For I am made strong in His praise, and I have faith in Him. 6 I will open my mouth and His spirit will utter in me the glory of the Lord and His beauty; the work of His hands and the operation of His fingers: 7 The multitude of His mercies and the strength of His word. 8 For the word of the Lord searches out all things, both the invisible and that which reveals His thought; 9 For the eye sees His works, and the ear hears His thought; 10 He spread out the earth and He settled the waters in the sea: 11 He measured the heavens and fixed the stars: and He established the creation and set it up: 12 And He rested from His works: 13 And created things run in their courses, and do their works: 14 And they know not how to stand and be idle; and His heavenly hosts are subject to His word. 15 The treasure-chamber of the light is the sun, and the treasury of the darkness is the night: 16 And He made the sun for the day that it may be bright, but night brings darkness over the face of the land; 17 And their alternations one to the other speak the beauty of God: IS And there is nothing that is without the Lord; for He was before any thing came into being: 19 And the worlds were made by His word, and by the thought of His heart. Glory and honour to His name. Hallelujah.]1
Authorship:
- by James Rendel Harris (1852 - 1941), "Ode 16", appears in The Forgotten Books of Eden, in The Odes of Solomon, first published 1926
Based on:
- a text in Aramaic (ܪܡܝܐ) by Bible or other Sacred Texts , from the Greek, 1st century A.D.? [text unavailable]
Go to the single-text view
View original text (without footnotes)1 omitted by Hovhaness.
Researcher for this page: Jean Nandi
3. As the wings of doves  [sung text checked 1 time]
Language: English
This Ode is a musical gem. 1 As the wings of doves over their nestlings; [and the mouth of their nestlings towards their mouths.]1 2 So also are the wings of the Spirit over my heart: 3 [My heart is delighted and exults: like the babe who exults in the womb of his mother: 4 I believed; therefore I was at rest; for faithful is He in whom I have believed:]1 5 He has richly blessed me and my head is with Him: and the sword shall not divide me from Him, nor the scimitar; [6 For I am ready before destruction comes; and I have been set on His immortal pinions: 7 And He showed me His sign: forth and given me to drink, and from that life is the spirit within me, and it cannot die, for it lives. 8 They who saw me marvelled at me, because I was persecuted, and they supposed that I was swallowed up: for I seemed to them as one of the lost; 9 And my oppression became my salvation; and I was their reprobation because there was no zeal in me; 10 Because I did good to every man I was hated, 11 And they came round me like mad dogs, who ignorantly attack their masters, 12 For their thought is corrupt and their understanding perverted. 13 But I was carrying water in my right hand, and their bitterness I endured by my sweetness; 14 And I did not perish, for I was not their brother nor was my birth like theirs. 15 And they sought for my death and did not find it: for I was older than the memorial of them; 16 And vainly did they make attack upon me and those who, without reward, came after me: 17 They sought to destroy the memorial of him who was before them. 18 For the thought of the Most High cannot be anticipated; and His heart is superior to all wisdom. Hallelujah.]1
Authorship:
- by James Rendel Harris (1852 - 1941), "Ode 28", appears in The Forgotten Books of Eden, in The Odes of Solomon, first published 1926
Based on:
- a text in Aramaic (ܪܡܝܐ) by Bible or other Sacred Texts , from the Greek, 1st century A.D.? [text unavailable]
Go to the single-text view
View original text (without footnotes)1 omitted by Hovhaness.
Researcher for this page: Jean Nandi
Total word count: 775