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For Easter, I feel like the focus is joyousness–both spiritually and in the natural world around us there seems to be more joy, strength and life. More sunlight raises the level of general happiness in most people so there’s even internal ‘renewal’! Shelley’s “The Isle” is a poem in this mood:
THE ISLE.
By anemone and violet,
Like mosaic, paven:
And its roof was flowers and leaves
Which the summer’s breath enweaves,
Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze
Pierce the pines and tallest trees,
Each a gem engraven;—
Girt by many an azure wave
With which the clouds and mountains pave
A lake’s blue chasm.
Canadian poet Archibald Lampman [1861-1899]
provides an Easter Attitude in his smaller, more evocative in tone pieces “Sight” or “March”
SIGHT.
The world is bright with beauty, and its days
Are filled with music;could we only know
True ends from false, and lofty things from low
Could we but tear away the walls that graze
Our very elbows in life’s frosty way
Behold the width beyond us with its flow,
Its knowledge and its murmur and its glow,
Where doubt itself is but a golden haze.
Are filled with music;could we only know
True ends from false, and lofty things from low
Could we but tear away the walls that graze
Our very elbows in life’s frosty way
Behold the width beyond us with its flow,
Its knowledge and its murmur and its glow,
Where doubt itself is but a golden haze.
Ah brothers, still upon our pathway lies
The shadow of dim weariness and fear,
Yet if we could but lift our earthward eyes
To see, and open our dull ears to hear,
Then should the wonder of this world draw near
And life’s innumerable harmonies.
MARCH.
Over the dripping roofs and sunk snow-barrows
The bells are ringing loud and strangely near,
The shout of children dins upon mine ear
Shrilly, and like a flight of silvery arrows
Showers the sweet gossip of the British sparrows,
Gathered in noisy knots of one or two,
To joke and chatter just as mortals do
Over the days long tale of joys and sorrows;
Talk before bed-time of bold deeds together
Of thefts and fights, of hard-times and the weather,
Till sleep disarm them, to each little brain
Bringing tucked wings and many a blissful dream,
Visions of wind and sun, of field and stream,
And busy barn-yards with their scattered grain.
