Easter by George Herbert

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.

In the first stanza, the risen Lord is a friend or lover who bids the Christian rise. Then the analogy shifts to alchemy. “Calcined” means “burnt to ashes,” which was the process of purifying the base metal, reducing it to its purest form and removing impurities. Good Friday does the calcining work and Easter brings about the transformation into gold.

The second and third stanzas move to a musical analogy: the wood of the cross and the wood of instruments; the sign on the cross bore Christ’s name (INRI) and the music proclaims it; the stretched sinews of Christ and the strings (animal gut) of instruments. “Consort” means “play together,” but a musical chord has three notes, so to the heart and the lute, the Spirit is added.

In the last three stanzas, the form of the poem changes to the “aubade,” the lovers’ poem at dawn—the lover singing to wake his beloved and rise from bed. In this spiritual adaptation, the Christian sings to Christ who is already risen from the sleep of death. He does not require our offerings of flowers or perfumes (like the women at the tomb). His rising brings its own sweetness and outshines the sun. And though we count 365 days in a year, His resurrection is the one true everlasting Day.

Notes adapted from George Herbert, The Complete English Works, Everyman’s Library.