"Spring bursts today!
For Christ is Risen and all the earth’s at play,"
Christina signed.
Yet brutal men strive as if their god had died.
There is no fun
Where Eden once bloomed, but bomb and blood and gun.
The peace on earth
Longfellow’s bells rang is not where Christ saw birth.
Yet the One Light
That played in Eden there rises just as bright.
He will suffice,
Who, through His eclipse, has assured Paradise.
That Christmas chime
Still reminds the faint the Live God acts in Time:
For Easter said
There is no god but God, Whose Son rose from the dead.
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Referenced Hymns:
An Easter Carol (Before 1896) Christina Rossetti : http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=1062
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day (1863) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Heard_the_Bells_on_Christmas_Day
Morning Has Broken (Circa 1931) Eleanor Farjeon : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_Has_Broken
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For years, our church had a banner that read: "Spring bursts today! For Christ is Risen and all the earth’s at play." And I thought it was as sappy a sentiment as I had ever seen. Years later, I looked through a book of Christina Rossetti’s poems, and was stunned to discover that saccharine observation was the opening of one of her Easter Carols. That banner rose considerably in my estimation, but not for the reason you may think. I was not moved by the poem, and still thought that stanza sounded silly, but it stands a an reassuring reminder that even great poets have off days.
Longfellow wrote his Christmas poem during the fiercest days of the American Civil War. He understood that, at such times, the sweeter sentiments of holiday celebrations are more likely to nauseate the heartsick, instead of encouraging them. But the bells’ essential song – "God is not dead, nor does He sleep" – remains truer than any pretty word pictures.
Morning Has Broken is another pretty song that, in my circles anyway, is considered too sentimental to be used in a worship service. Such dogmatic thinking deprives a congregation of the inspiration of a genuinely beautiful melody, and the artfully expressed doctrine and praise it supports. As with that funny old banner (which I wheedled away from the banner ladies when they were going to throw it out), what appears to be threadbare frivolity in grim times, can be, in fact, eternal Joy dressed in lace.
Wishing you undisguised joy this Easter! He is Risen, Indeed!
