Easter Rising

Almost a hundred years ago, in the streets of Dublin, a small band of rebels led an armed insurrection against the British and proclaimed an Irish Republic. The Easter Rising of 1916 lasted six days. Five hundred people were killed. Most of the instigators were court-martialed and executed, including the artichect of the Rising, Joseph Plunkett, a poet and a journalist. On the day of his execution, Plunkett was married in the chapel of Kilmainham jail to his fianceé, Grace Gifford. Hours later, he was shot by a firing squad. He was 28 years old. 

This is his poem “I see his blood upon the rose.” It's a lyric magnificat of great power, full of the incarnation as well as the resurrection. It reminds me of Donne and Herbert, but with an Irish lilt. It has the pathos and intensity of someone whose own life, like Christ's, was brief and passionate, and whose end was bloody. It's not only about a way of seeing the world but a declaration of loyalty to that vision. It's in fact a hymn of allegiance. A creed.

I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.
 
I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice—and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.
 
All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.

The gates of bliss

Over the past several Easters I've posted a number of George Herbert poems, but I've never posted his longest and most moving Passion poem: “The Sacrifice.” It's the story of Jesus' capture and execution from his own lips, overlaid with his God's-eye view of myth and mystery. Every aspect of the episode is given its symbolic resonance, its echo through the law and the prophets and the long history of God's forbearance. Even now, I won't post the whole thing because it's immense, but here are a few stanzas. You can find the whole poem here - it's six times as long, and full of riches.

Arise, arise, they come. Look how they runne!

Alas! what haste they make to be undone!

How with their lanterns do they seek the sunne!

Was ever grief like mine?

Judas, dost thou betray me with a kisse?

Canst thou finde hell about my lips? and misse

Of life, just at the gates of life and blisse?

Was ever grief like mine?

All my Disciples flie; fear puts a barre

Betwixt my friends and me. They leave the starre,

That brought the wise men of the East from farre.

Was ever grief like mine?

Ah! how they scourge me! yet my tendernesse

Doubles each lash: and yet their bitternesse

Windes up my grief to a mysteriousnesse:

Was ever grief like mine?

And now I am deliver’d unto death,

Which each one calls for so with utmost breath,

That he before me well nigh suffereth:

Was ever grief like mine?

Weep not, deare friends, since I for both have wept

When all my tears were bloud, the while you slept:

Your tears for your own fortunes should be kept:

Was ever grief like mine?

O all ye who passe by, behold and see;

Man stole the fruit, but I must climbe the tree;

The tree of life to all, but onely me:

Was ever grief like mine?

Lo, here I hang, charg’d with a world of sinne,

The greater world o’ th’ two; for that came in

By words, but this by sorrow I must win:

Was ever grief like mine?

But, O my God, my God! why leav’st thou me,

The sonne, in whom thou dost delight to be?

My God, my God ------

Never was grief like mine.

But now I die; now all is finished.

My wo, mans weal: and now I bow my head.

Onely let others say, when I am dead,

Never was grief like mine.

Resurrection, imperfect

Sleep, sleep old sun, thou canst not have repass'd,
As yet, the wound thou took'st on Friday last;
Sleep then, and rest; the world may bear thy stay;
A better sun rose before thee to-day;
Who—not content to enlighten all that dwell
On the earth's face, as thou—enlighten'd hell,
And made the dark fires languish in that vale,
As at thy presence here our fires grow pale;
Whose body, having walk'd on earth, and now
Hasting to heaven, would—that He might allow
Himself unto all stations, and fill all—
For these three days become a mineral.
He was all gold when He lay down, but rose
All tincture, and doth not alone dispose
Leaden and iron wills to good, but is
Of power to make e'en sinful flesh like his.
Had one of those, whose credulous piety
Thought that a soul one might discern and see
Go from a body, at this sepulchre been,
And, issuing from the sheet, this body seen,
He would have justly thought this body a soul,
If not of any man, yet of the whole.
Desunt Caetera.

Donne's poem is imperfect because unfinished, but also because our analogues of resurrection are imperfect: the rising of the sun, the transmutation of minerals. Our understanding is dim, fixed on the separation of body and soul; our fires are indeed pale. There's another sense, which Donne might not have meant, of the resurrection itself as unfinished, not because incomplete but because it was the beginning, not the end - as the rising sun is the prelude of day.

Thou wast up by break of day

“Easter,” by George Herbert, 1633.

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 crosse 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, & 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.

All sweetness to your Lenten lips

Here's Hopkins, breaking Lent and breathing Easter with a sonnet. The poem's about churchfolk coming to their chilly service, taking wine and wafer for a feast; but Christ is in it and them, putting aside pain and shame to drink of joy and ease, his brimming reward. 

Pure fasted faces draw unto this feast: 
God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips.
You striped in secret with breath-taking whips, 
Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced
To crosses meant for Jesu's; you whom the East 
With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips
Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships, 
You vigil-keepers with low flames decreased, 
God shall o'er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze
And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment
Give myrrhy-threaded golden folds of ease.
Your scarce-sheathed bones are weary of being bent: 
Lo, God shall strengthen all the feeble knees.