And severed me from GoD and grace,

And wrought me death, and all my race,
As long as time shall be.

O Lover of the sons of men!

Forgive, and call me back again !

"In that same hour I lost the glorious stole
Of innocence, that God's own Hands had made,
And now, the tempter poisoning all my soul,
I sit, in fig leaves and in skins arrayed :
I sit condemn'd, distress'd, forsaken;
Must till the ground whence I was taken
By labour's daily sweat.

But Thou, That shalt hereafter come,
The Offspring of a Virgin-womb,
Have pity on me yet!

O turn on me those gracious eyes,
And call me back to Paradise!

"O glorious Paradise! O lovely clime!
O God-built mansion! Joy of every Saint!
Happy remembrance to all coming time!
Whisper, with all thy leaves, in cadence faint,
One prayer to Him Who made them all,
One prayer for Adam in his fall !—
That He, Who formed thy gates of yore,
Would bid those gates unfold once more
That I had closed by sin:

And let me taste that holy Tree
That giveth immortality

To them that dwell therein :

Or have I fallen so far from grace
That mercy hath for me no place?"

Adam sat right against the Eastern gate,
By many a storm of sad remembrance tost:
"O me! so ruined by the serpent's hate!
O me! so glorious once, and now so lost!

So mad that bitter lot to choose!

Beguil'd of all I had to lose!

Must I then, gladness of my eyes,—
Must I then leave thee, Paradise,
And as an exile go?

And must I never cease to grieve
How once my GOD, at cool of eve,
Came down to walk below?
O Merciful! on Thee I call:
O Pitiful! forgive my fall!"

S. Theodore of the Studium.

+A.D. 826.

Theodore of the Studium, by his sufferings and his influence, did more, perhaps, in the cause of Icons than any other man. His uncle, S. Plato, and himself, had been cruelly persecuted by Constantine, for refusing to communicate with him after his illicit marriage with Theodora, at a time when, as we have seen, the firmness of even the Patriarch Tarasius gave way. Raised subsequently to be Hegumen of the great abbey of the Studium, the first at Constantinople, and probably the most influential that ever existed in the world, Theodore exhibited more doubtful

conduct in the schism which regarded the readmission to communion of Joseph, the priest who had give the nuptial benediction to Constantine but he suffered imprisonment on this account with the greatest firmness. When the Iconoclastic persecution again broke out under Leo the Armenian, Theodore was one of the first sufferers: he was exiled, imprisoned, scourged, and left for dead. Under Michael Curopalata he enjoyed greater liberty; but he died in banishment, Nov. 11th, A.D. 826. Hymns are, in my judgment, superior to those of S. Theophanes,—and nearly, if not quite, equal to the works of S. Cosmas. In those (comparatively few) which he has left for the Festivals of Saints, he does not appear to advantage : it is in his Lent Canons, in the Triodion, that his great excellency lies. The contrast there presented between the rigid, unbending, unyielding cha

His