# Mediaeval Hymns and Sequences/Ecce dies celebris

Ecce dies celebris.
This is another prose of Adam of S. Victor, composed for Easter.
Hail the much remembered Day!
Night from morning flies away,
Life the chains of death hath burst:
Gladness, welcome! grief, begone!
Greater glory draweth on
Than confusion at the first.
Flies the shadowy from the true:
Flies the ancient from the new:
Comfort hath each tear dispersed.
Hail our Pascha, That wast dead!
What preceded in the Head
That each member hopes to gain;
Christ, our newer Pascha now,
Late in death content to bow
When the spotless Lamb was slain.
​Christ the prey hath here unbound
From the foe that girt us round:
Tale, in Samson's prowess found
When the lion-form he slew:
David, in His Father's cause,
From the Lion's hungry jaws
And the bear's devouring paws
Hath set free His flock anew.
Samson thousands slew by dying:
Christ, true Samson, typifying, Who by death o'ercame His foes:
Samson, by interpretation,
Is their sunlight: Our Salvation
Thus hath brought illumination
To the Elect on whom He rose.
From the Cross's pole of glory
Flows the must of ancient story
In the Church's wine-vat stored:
From the press, now trodden duly,
Gentile first-fruits gathered newly
Drink the precious liquor poured.
Sackcloth, worn with foul abuses, Passes on to royal uses; ​Grace in that garb at length we see,
The Flesh hath conquered misery.
They, by whom their monarch perished
Lost the kingdom, that they cherished,
And for a sign and wonder Cain
Is set who never shall be slain.
Reprobated and rejected
Was this Stone that, now elected,
For a Trophy stands erected
And a precious Cornerstone:
Sin's, not Nature's, termination,
He creates a new Creation,
And Himself their colligation,
Binds two peoples into one.
Give we glory to the Head,
O'er the members love be shed!
* ↑ This allusion is not very clear. There seems to be a reference to Saul, in the wilderness of Maon, when, having compassed David and his men round, he was only prevented from destroying them by the intelligence that the Philistines had invaded the land. The thought of the Philistines introduces the great destroyer of the Philistines—Samson.
* ↑ The victory of Samson over the lion is spiritualised in an infinity of ways. Samson overcame him without telling his father and his mother. From the eater came forth meat, as from death came forth life, or, otherwise, as from the death of the lion of the Tribe of Judah came forth the spiritual honey which satisfies His people.
* ↑ As the dead which Samson slew in his death were more than they whom he slew in his life,—so not till after our Lord's death did the thousands of converts fall to the Church. Samson, according to the ungrammatical interpretation of the Fathers, means their Sun: that is, the sun of those that belong to Him.—Thus, Christ, though the Sun of all, yet shall bring final salvation to the Elect alone.
* ↑ The reference is to the Pole, on which the two spies carried the bunch of grapes. The Pole is the Cross:—the bunch typifies the Lord, as the True Vine; the spies, the Jews and Gentiles respectively. The spy that went first, turned his back on the bunch; thus the Jews, first called, rejected our Lord. He that came last kept his eyes on it;—thus the Gentiles, though last called, accepted the offered salvation.
* ↑ The poet refers partly to the Psalm, "Thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness,"—partly to the story of the Gibeonites,—by means of whose old sacks, when received by the princes, their salvation was effected. The sackcloth is here the Flesh of Christ; and the Royal Uses, Its immortality of glory after His Death.
* ↑ The Vulgate is here followed: "The Lord set Cain for a sign."