Here is Advent Lyric 5 from the second section of Christ I.
These verses are feeling so much better than the lyrics of the Metres of Boethius. Maybe it is because they actually have interesting images and figurative language here--there are things to chew on in these poems.
5.
Hail shining ray! Hail brightest of angels
and illumination of the soothfast sun
sent over middle-earth to all mankind,
more brilliant than the stars—always
you light up every season of your own self!
As you, God born readily from God,
Son of the True Father, were ever
without beginning in the glory of the sky,
so now needfully your own creation
abides you faithfully, so that you send us
the bright sun, and that you come yourself
to illuminate those who for the longest time,
shrouded in shadow and in darkness here,
reside in the everlasting night—
enfolded in our sins, they have had to endure
the dark shadows of death.
Now we joyously believe in salvation
brought to the many by the word of God,
who at the start was the Father Almighty,
eternal even with God, and now become again
flesh without sin, that the virgin birthed
as a comfort to the miserable.
God was among us, seen without sins—
they dwelt together: the mighty Son of the Measurer
and the Child of Man both, concordant
among humankind. We may tell our thanks
perpetually according to his desert,
because he wished to send us himself. (104-29)
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