Asomen pantes laoi

Composed by St. John of Damascus around the middle of the eighth century, this Greek Canon for St. Thomas's Sunday (Low Sunday) is found in the liturgical Pentecostarion. Like most Greek Canons, it is built upon the nine Biblical Canticles used in Eastern Orthodox worship, omitting the second canticle. Several odes from this canon were translated into English by John Mason Neale and published in the Christian Remembrancer in April 1859, later appearing in his Hymns of the Eastern Church (1862).

The first ode, "Asōmen pantes laoi," based on the Song of Moses (Exodus 15), became famous in Neale's translation as "Come, ye faithful, raise the strain." Written in four eight-line stanzas, it was included in the Appendix to Hymns Ancient and Modern (1868) with a doxology substituted for the final stanza, and was adopted in The Hymnary and Church Hymns as a standard Easter hymn. Neale also translated Ode 3 ("Stereōson me, Christe" as "On the rock of Thy commandments"), Ode 4 ("Mega to mystērion" as "Christ, we turn our eyes to Thee"), and Ode 5 ("Ek nyktos orthrizontes" as "Thee, O Christ, we, very early rising"), though these latter odes did not enter general congregational use.