These twenty-five verses, composed by Symeon the Translator, are appointed to be sung at the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts on the evening of the Wednesday of the fifth week of Great Lent. This is as a prelude to the matins of the fifth Thursday, which contains the entirety of the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete.
All of these verses are metrically identical in Greek, and are appointed to be sung to the same melody. In the Slavonic translation, they are not metrically identical, but they are all made up of six lines, and thus lend themselves nicely to a podoben melody without any repeating patterns. The melody given here is that of the Monastery of the Caves in Kyiv.