Song Cycle by Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000)

1. No way is hard

Authorship

by James Rendel Harris (1852-1941) , "Ode 34", from The Forgotten Books of Eden, in The Odes of Solomon, published 1926

a text in Aramaic by Bible or other Sacred Texts , from the Greek, 1^st century A.D.? [text unavailable]

  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.

2. As the work of the husbandman

Authorship

by James Rendel Harris (1852-1941) , "Ode 16", from The Forgotten Books of Eden, in The Odes of Solomon, published 1926

a text in Aramaic by Bible or other Sacred Texts , from the Greek, 1^st century A.D.? [text unavailable]

  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

3. As the wings of doves

Authorship

by James Rendel Harris (1852-1941) , "Ode 28", from The Forgotten Books of Eden, in The Odes of Solomon, published 1926

a text in Aramaic by Bible or other Sacred Texts , from the Greek, 1^st century A.D.? [text unavailable]

   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

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