AN EASTER HYMN
by: Arthur Shearly Cripps
(1869-1952)
- IS wide
Hands fashioned us white grains and red
- His Eyes weep rains to swell them in their bed,
- Whereby the dust-grains of our lives are fed.
- Alleluia!
-
- In Earth our mothers bosom undecayed
- The Seed-corn of the Flesh He took, He laid--
- One white small Grain beneath a sealed rocks shade.
- Alleluia!
-
- How blind that Seed lay till this autumn morn
- When forth it sprouted blade and flower and corn,
- And with Its lifted Head the seal was torn!
- Alleluia!
-
- Hope of mens bodies grains both red and white--
- Shrivelled and sere and void of speech and sight,
- Is that blind Seed Who burst His way to light.
- Alleluia!
-
- We, Gods red millet grains, men hold so cheap,
- Innumerable beneath our grey rocks sleep,
- Yet He that cared to sow us cares to reap.
- Alleluia!
"An Easter Hymn" is reprinted
from The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. Ed. Nicholson
& Lee. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1917. |
MORE POEMS BY ARTHUR SHEARLY CRIPPS |
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