image courtesy of https://lanciaesmith.com
The Lord is Risen! He is risen indeed Alleluia!
On this Easter morning I have already posted George Herbert’s glorious Easter poem but I thought I would add a couple of my own; the fifteenth and final sonnet from my Stations of the Cross sequence, and a villanelle for Easter which I composed one dark morning last year whilst out walking my dog. Lancia Smith has made a beautiful image with lines from the new poem.
This sonnet, and the others I have been posting for Holy Week are all drawn from my collection Sounding the Seasons, published by Canterbury Press here in England. The book is now back in stock on both Amazon UK and USA and physical copies are shortly to be available in Canada via Steve Bell‘s Signpost Music. The book is now also out on Kindle. Please feel free to make use of these sonnets in church services and to copy and share them. If you can mention the book from which they are taken that would be great.
As usual you can hear the poems by clicking on the title or the ‘play’ button
XV Easter Dawn
He blesses every love which weeps and grieves
And now he blesses hers who stood and wept
And would not be consoled, or leave her love’s
Last touching place, but watched as low light crept
Up from the east. A sound behind her stirs
A scatter of bright birdsong through the air.
She turns, but cannot focus through her tears,
Or recognise the Gardener standing there.
She hardly hears his gentle question ‘Why,
Why are you weeping?’, or sees the play of light
That brightens as she chokes out her reply
‘They took my love away, my day is night’
And then she hears her name, she hears Love say
The Word that turns her night, and ours, to Day.
On Easter Day
As though some heavy stone were rolled away,
You find an open door where all was closed,
Wide as an empty tomb on Easter Day.
Lost in your own dark wood, alone, astray,
You pause, as though some secret were disclosed,
As though some heavy stone were rolled away.
You glimpse the sky above you, wan and grey,
Wide through these shadowed branches interposed,
Wide as an empty tomb on Easter Day.
Perhaps there’s light enough to find your way,
For now the tangled wood feels less enclosed,
As though some heavy stone were rolled away.
You lift your feet out of the miry clay
And seek the light in which you once reposed,
Wide as an empty tomb on Easter Day.
And then Love calls your name, you hear Him say:
The way is open, death has been deposed,
As though some heavy stone were rolled away,
And you are free at last on Easter Day.
Malcolm Guite 
What a glorious day, when the clouds roll away, and on a white horse our risen Saviour we shall meet, wide as an empty tomb on Easter Day.
Pingback: Resurrection Sunday - He is Risen! | Lancia E. Smith
Of all the French fixed forms, I love the villanelle best: an extreme exercise of writing a poem from the outside in. The resulting compression is as tense and explosive as the power of a coiled steel spring.
Yes I agree it’s a wonderful (if demanding form