And cleanse all baser lusts away.
Let us be swayed by thy decree,
From many evils set us free;
With goodness fill the waiting heart,
And keep all fear of death apart!
To the same sixth century belong some notable hymns which have not even a school to which to assign their paternity. The most famous of these is the
Ad coenam Agni providi,
which has been twice rewritten in conformity with the laws of classic prosody, reappearing in the Roman Breviary as the Ad regias Agni dapes, and in the Paris Breviary as the Forti tegente brachio. In English there have been at least twelve versions since 1710. The great merit of the hymn is the vigorous and terse way in which the mystical correspondence of the Christian sacrament to the Jewish passover, and of our deliverance from the yoke of Satan to the Jewish deliverance from the Egyptian bondage, are worked out. As Daniel suggests, its first stanza refers to the old usage that the catechumens, who had received baptism just before Easter, partook of the other sacrament on the first Sunday after Easter (Dominicus in albis), wearing the white robes of their baptism (stolis albis candidi). Another notable but fatherless hymn of this age is the Sanctorum meritis inclyta gaudiis—a beautiful commemoration of the martyrs whose sufferings were still so vividly remembered by the Church. Quite worthy of mention also is the Lenten hymn, Jam Christe, sol justitiae, which expresses the early Christian attitude toward God’s works, connecting the looked-for Easter with the renewal of the world by the spring—
“Dies venit, dies tua
In qua reflorent omnia.”