Anthem Poems from Easter 2008

 

Love Bade Me Welcome

George Herbert, 1593-1632

 

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning

If I lack'd anything.

 

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here;"

Love said, "You shall be he."

"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,

I cannot look on thee."

Love took my hand and smiling did reply,

"Who made the eyes but I?"

 

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame

Go where it doth deserve."

"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"

"My dear, then I will serve."

"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."

So I did sit and eat.

 

The Morning Light Renews the Sky   

Samuel Barber Easter Chorale, 1965

 

The morning light renews the sky

Across the air the birds ignite

Like sparks, to take this blaze of day

Through all the precincts of the night.

 

Alleluia! Alleluia!

The fires of dawn refresh our eyes,

We watch the world grow wide and bright

And praise our newly risen Light.

 

The winter land receives the year.

Her smallest creatures rouse and cling

To swelling roots and buds that stir

The restless air to reel and ring!

 

Alleluia! Alleluia!

The sounds of waking fill our ears.

We listen to the live earth sing

And praise our loving Source and Spring.

Sermon Poems from Easter 2008   

 O Taste and See

Denise Levertov, 1923-1997

 

The world is

not with us enough.

O taste and see

 

the subway Bible poster said,

meaning the Lord, meaning

if anything all that lives

to the imagination’s tongue,

 

grief, mercy, language,

tangerine, weather, to

breathe them, bite,

savor, chew, swallow, transform

 

into our flesh our

deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,

living in the orchard and being

 

hungry, and plucking

the fruit.

 

i thank you God for most this amazing

e.e. cummings, 1894-1962

 

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)