Round-up – Easter poems
Ten paschal poems for Easter Week
Dear classics readers,
To celebrate Easter Week, here are ten poems for you to read between Thursday and Sunday this week.
We start with a snippet of Dante, whose Divine Comedy begins on Maundy Thursday and runs until the Sunday after Easter.
I’ve also included some John Donne, Thomas Hardy, Christina Rossetti and W. B. Yeats. In each case, I’ve featured a short excerpt and a link to the full poem.
The most famous Easter poem of all is probably George Herbert’s ‘Easter Wings’, first published posthumously in The Temple (1633). It’s a shape poem, written to be printed vertically so that the lines form the shape of angels’ wings.
In fact, ‘Easter Wings’ is just one of several Easter poems by Herbert and I’ve included a different one below.
I hope you enjoy them!
Maundy Thursday
Inferno by Dante (1321)
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Read the whole cantica, translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, here.
Good Friday
‘Good Friday 1613, Riding Westward’ by John Donne (1613)
Hence is’t, that I am carryed towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget
Read the whole poem here.
‘Unkept Good Fridays’ by Thomas Hardy (1927)
There are many more Good Fridays
Than this, if we but knew
The names, and could relate them,
Of men whom rulers slew
Read the whole poem here.
Easter Saturday
‘Easter Even’ by Christina Rossetti (1862)
Lay Him in the garden-rock to rest;
Rest you the Sabbath length:
The Sun that went down crimson in the west
Shall rise renewed in strength.
Read the whole poem here.
‘Loveliest of Trees’ by A. E. Housman (1896)
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Read the whole poem here.
Easter Day
‘Easter’ by George Herbert (1633)
Can there be any day but this,
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we misse:
There is but one, and that one ever.
Read the whole poem here.
‘Easter Day’ by Oscar Wilde (1881)
Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam,
And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red,
Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head:
In splendour and in light the Pope passed home.
Read the whole sonnet here.
‘Easter’ by Joyce Kilmer (1914)
The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings.
This is the whole poem.
‘Easter, 1916’ by W. B. Yeats (1916)
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
Read the whole poem here.
‘Christmas is Really for the Children’ by Steve Turner (2003)
Easter is not really
for the children
unless accompanied by
a cream filled egg.
It has whips, blood, nails,
a spear and allegations
of body snatching.
Read the whole poem here.
What other Easter poems would you recommend? Let me know in a comment below.
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The poem "Christmas is Really for the Children" is new to me. As is the poet Stephen Turner. I'm here for any poem that rhymes disposition and chickens.
Oh, thank you so much for this collection of poems!