Featured Poems: An Easter collection

We realise that we can't bring you chocolates, or bunnies, or bunches of flowers, but we can bring together many aspects of Easter with the help of some great poets. Below is a collection of 'Easter' poems, pulling together a few of our seasonal favourites for you to read whilst you finish off that last slice of simnel cake, prepare the lamb, consume a buttered hot-cross bun, get ready for church or bite the top of your Easter egg. Hopefully they will bring a little something extra to enjoy amongst the festivities.

Easter Wings

Lord, Who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poore:

With Thee
O let me rise,
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day Thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

My tender age in sorrow did beginne;
And still with sicknesses and shame
Thou didst so punish sinne,
That I became
Most thinne.

With Thee
Let me combine,
And feel this day Thy victorie;
For, if I imp my wing on Thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

George Herbert

It was Easter as I walked in the public gardens (1929)

It was Easter as I walked in the public gardens, 
Hearing the frogs exhaling from the pond, 
Watching traffic of magnificent cloud 
Moving without anxiety on open sky--- 
Season when lovers and writers find 
An altering speech for altering things, 
An emphasis on new names, on the arm 
A fresh hand with fresh power. 
But thinking so I came at once 
Where solitary man sat weeping on a bench, 
Hanging his head down, with his mouth distorted 
Helpless and ugly as an embryo chicken.

So I remember all of those whose death 
Is necessary condition of the season's putting forth, 
Who, sorry in this time, look only back 
To Christmas intimacy, a winter dialogue 
Fading in silence, leaving them in tears. 
And recent particulars come to mind; 
The death by cancer of a once hated master, 
A friend's analysis of his own failure, 
Listened to at intervals throughout the winter 
At different hours and in different rooms. 
But always with success of others for comparison, 
The happiness, for instance, of my friend Kurt Groote, 
Absence of fear in Gerhart Meyer 
From the sea, the truly strong man.

A 'bus ran home then, on the public ground 
Lay fallen bicycles like huddled corpses: 
No chattering valves of laughter emphasised 
Nor the swept gown ends of a gesture stirred 
The sessile hush; until a sudden shower 
Fell willing into grass and closed the day,
Making choice seem a necessary error.

W. H. Auden

Chocolate Cake

I love chocolate cake.
And when I was a boy
I loved it even more.

Sometimes we used to have it for tea
and Mum used to say,
'If there's any left over
you can have it to take to school
tomorrow to have at playtime.'
And the next day I would take it to school
wrapped up in tin foil
open it up at playtime
and sit in the corner of the playground
eating it,
you know how the icing on top
is all shiny and it cracks as you
bite into it,
and there's that other kind of icing in
the middle
and it sticks to your hands and you
can lick your fingers
and lick your lips
oh it's lovely.
yeah.

Michael Rosen

(This section of the poem has been reproduced with kind permission by the poet. If you want more you can get it from Quick Let's Get Out of Here (Puffin Books) or on CD from Quick Let's Get Out of Here (Abbey Media). I highly recommend both.)

Holy Thursday

'Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two and two, in red and blue and green,
Grey-headed beadles walk'd before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames' waters flow.

O what a multitude they seem'd, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song,
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of Heaven among.
Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor;
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.

William Blake

I stood tip-toe upon a little hill

I stood tip-toe upon a little hill,
The air was cooling, and so very still, 
That the sweet buds which with a modest pride 
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside, 
Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems, 
Had not yet lost those starry diadems 
Caught from the early sobbing of the morn. 
The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn, 
And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they slept 
On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept 
A little noiseless noise among the leaves, 
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves:

John Keats