Easter
Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him mayst rise:
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.
Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The cross taught all wood to resound his name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.
Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long:
Or, since all music is but three parts vied
And multiplied,
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.
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 Sun 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 suns to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we miss:
There is but one, and that one ever.
"Rise heart; thy Lord is risen." Jesus is risen and shakes us awake, pulls us out of sleep half awake, and hauls us unto the daylight of a world made new to join in the singing and music making of life in all its fullness. The lines have urgency and excitement and move from the imperative mood "Rise heart!" to a more persuasive tone of promise that pulls us up and out of whatever pulls us down.
"That as his death calcined us to dust, / his life may make thee gold, and much more just." Trust Herbert to send us back to the dictionary. But his word is well chosen; "reducing a mineral to its purest form by burning off impure substances." The atonement is a purifying process, a restoration of God's image in human life, as Christians are united with Christ crucified and risen.
The lovely line, "The cross taught all wood to resound his name" imagines the novice musician learning from the maestro. The definitive music of creation restored, was played on the cross, and it is the Christian calling to celebrate and praise using such art and skill as can be learned in order to reproduce the music of redemption and resurrection. Incidentally, I'm convinced this verse is one of the defining sources that lie behind R S Thomas's remarkable poem, The Musician.
So in the resurrection praise of Easter heart and lute orchestrate a long joyous song. And to complete the tree part chord the Holy Spirit is invited to take part in order to perfect the music of praise. "Rise...Awake...Consort" are three imperatives to praise, to come alive with Christ the risen Lord, to make the best music humanly possible, and then to sing the song of the redeemed with the Holy Spirit as the lead instrumentalist whose improvisations perfect the performance.
And then we are given the words of the song in three festive verses celebrating the gala day of Christ's resurrection. But we are never ahead of Christ. He is up before us, goes ahead of us, anticipates our praises, and joins the Easter procession bringing his gifts to reciprocate the joy of the praising community
The sun can't compete with the Son, a pun Herbert enjoys using; and the playful rhyming of perfume and presume hints at the light-hearted dismissing of any comparison between the brilliance and timeliness of the rising sun, and the radiance and permanence of the rising of the Son. The last stanza says the same thing, ending with the promotion of Easter day and resurrection morning as the best day, ever.
This is a the strangest Easter in our lifetime. I'm not sure there has ever been an Easter Sunday when all over the world, congregations have been unable to gather and celebrate the central event in Christian faith. Herbert's poem offers a counterbalance to what many of us are feeling as we contemplate a world changed beyond anything we have known, or even imagined. More than in previous Easters, I sense and own the sombre realities of Paul's words, "If Christ be not risen we are of all people the most miserable..." But says Paul, "Christ has indeed been raised."
While we are living through these times of suffering, loss, anxiety, danger, isolation, and having to do so without the natural human comforts of togetherness, touch and shared presence, there is no place for a shallow triumphalism Nor are we being faithful to the Gospel by denial of the tragic in all of this, or despairing of God's future.
One of the older friends in our church seemed to find the right words: "We just have to get on with it, God love us." The courage to go on affirming the life God has given, and the assurance of a Love that will not let us go, stated with such common sense and hard won faith, echoes in the life of a 21st Century octogenarian the very same conviction that impels Herbert's first words in Easter: "Rise heart; thy Lord is risen."
(Tomorrow we will think about Herbert's pattern poem, Easter Wings. That will be the last in this series on George Herbert's poems. The image is of two relaxed angels for whom resurrection is the new normal in a post resurrection world! )
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