Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
By John Donne (15731631)
Easter Day
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SLEEP, sleep, old Sun! thou canst not have repast | |
As yet the wound thou took’st on Friday last; | |
Sleep then and rest; the world may bear thy stay, | |
A better sun rose before thee to-day. | |
Who not content t’ enlighten all that dwell | 5 |
On the earth’s face, as thou, enlighten’d hell; | |
And made the dark fires languish in that vale, | |
As at thy presence here our fires grow pale. | |
Whose body, having walk’d on earth, and now | |
Hastening to heaven, would—that He might allow | 10 |
Himself unto all stations, and fill all— | |
For these three days become a mineral. | |
He was all gold when He lay down, but rose | |
All tincture, 1 and doth not alone dispose | |
Leaden and iron wills to good, but is | 15 |
Of power to make ev’n sinful flesh like His. | |
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Note 1. “Easter Day,” line 13. This couplet means that Christ after His resurrection was enabled to make others what He is Himself by sending out His spirit upon them; just as the “tincture of gold”—that elixir of which alchemists dreamed—could transmute all other metals to itself. For another reference to the “tincture” see Herbert’s poem. [back] |
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