Mediaeval Hymns and Sequences/Chorus Novae Jerusalem
Chorus Novæ Jerusalem
This Paschal Hymn, the composition of S. Fulbert of Chartres, is not common in continental Breviaries, but was adopted in our own: where it occurs in the First Vespers of Low Sunday.
Ye Choirs of New Jerusalem!
To sweet new strains attune your theme;
The while we keep, from care releas'd,
With sober joy our Paschal Feast:
When Christ, Who spake the Dragon's doom,
Rose, Victor-Lion, from the Tomb:
That while with[1] living voice He cries,
The dead of other years might rise.
Engorg'd in former years, their prey
Must Death and Hell restore to-day:
And many a captive soul, set free,
With Jesus leaves captivity.
Right gloriously He triumphs now,
Worthy to Whom should all things bow;
And, joining heaven and earth again,
Links in one commonweal the twain.
And we, as these His deeds we sing,
His suppliant soldiers, pray our King,
That in His Palace, bright and vast,
We may keep watch and ward at last.
Long as unending ages run,
To God the Father laud be done;
To God the Son our equal praise,
And God the Holy Ghost, we raise.
- ↑ This alluded to the mediæval belief, to which we shall again have occasion to refer, that the lion's whelps are born dead;—but that their father, by roaring over them on the third day, raises them to life.