Easter Sunday

The Lord is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!

Good Friday in my Heart

Good Friday in my heart! Fear and affright!
My thoughts are the Disciples when they fled,
My words the words that priest and soldier said,
My deed the spear to desecrate the dead.
And day, Thy death therein, is changed to night.

Then Easter in my heart sends up the sun.
My thoughts are Mary, when she turned to see.
My words are Peter, answering, "Lov'st thou Me?"
My deeds are all Thine own drawn close to Thee,
And night and day, since Thou dost rise, are one.

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861–1907)

Resurrection

As the slow Evening gather'd in her grey,
   And one clear star its ancient pathway trod—
With long, low cadences of dear delay
   The lark, descending, left his song with God!
And Peace came, like a reverential soul,
   With far-off tremors of a further world,
And thro' the silver mist of twilight stole
   Unto the heart of all. And upward curl'd
The April moon, resurgent of the sun,
   To the blue dusk of the exalted dome
Of heav'n; and the white wind-flowers, one by one,
   Shook in light slumber on their hilly home.
It was so sweet to stoop and feel around!
   Each blade of grass a breathing lyre of life
Whereon the wind, in arias of sound,
   Told subtle music; how the great World, rife
With scent of violet, and primrose-strewn,
   Strain'd tender fingers from each dewy sod
To the dear Christ of chrysalis and moon—
   And, dusk descending, left her soul with God!

Fred G. Bowles

Easter Song

I got me flowers to straw Thy way,
I got me boughs off many a tree;
But Thou wast up by break of day,
And brought'st Thy sweets along with Thee.

The sunne arising in the East,
Though he give light, and th' East perfume,
If they should offer to contest
With Thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we misse:
There is but one, and that one ever.

George Herbert (1593–1633)

The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1917), ed. D. H. S. Nicholson and A. H. E. Lee, pp. 449, 577f, 23.

See also Edmund Spenser: Easter.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 04/11/04 11:32:18 AM
Categorized as Literary & Religious.