A Morning Prayer or vow and An Evening Prayer of failure as to the same.

Here are two simple, delightful hymns by Gregory Nazianzen, translated by Allen Chatfield in the late 19th century and available freely here: "Songs and Hymns of the Earliest Greek Christian Poets."

What is delightful about them can partly be ascertained in the titles: "A Morning Prayer" and "A Hymn at Night, after failure to keep vow". It makes one chuckle but is so on the mark as to human nature that one can realizes that whatever the grand monastic intentions and, indeed, achievements of masters such as Gregory, in the end we all must pray prayers like these. We are all sinners in the depths of ourselves and, as the hymn says, we must pray:

The day is down/ night hath prevailed/My Lord I have belied/I vowed, and thought to do/but failed/My steps did somewhere slide...

Thy light, O Christ, again bestow/Turn darkness into day.

A MORNING PRAYER.

'Tis dawn: to God I lift my hand,

To regulate my way;

My passions rule, and unmoved stand,

And give to Thee the day:


Not one dark word or deed of sin,

Nor one base thought allow;

But watch all avenues within,

And wholly keep my vow.


Shamed were my age, should I decline;

Shamed were Thy table too,

At which I stand:--the will is mine:

Give grace, my Christ, to do.

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A HYMN AT NIGHT, AFTER FAILURE TO KEEP VOW.

O Thou, the Word of truth divine!

All light I have not been,

Nor kept the day as wholly Thine;

For Thou dark spots hast seen.


The day is down: night hath prevailed:

My Lord I have belied;

I vowed, and thought to do, but failed;

My steps did somewhere slide.


There came a darkness from below

Obscuring safety's way.

Thy light, O Christ, again bestow;

Turn darkness into day.