A Sonnet for Easter Dawn

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The Lord is Risen! He is risen indeed Alleluia!

Heres is an extra ‘fifteenth’ sonnet for Easter Morning, which I dedicate to my friend Mary who asked me to write it, and to the memory of her husband Gavin. May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

Later today I will publish another Easter poem, but this completes the sonnet series I have been posting throughout Holy Week.

This sonnet, and the others I have been posting for Holy Week are all drawn from my collection Sounding the Seasons.

You can hear me read the poem by clicking on the title:

XV Easter Dawn

He blesses every love which weeps and grieves

And now he blesses hers who stood and wept

And would not be consoled, or leave her love’s

Last touching place, but watched as low light crept

Up from the east. A sound behind her stirs

A scatter of bright birdsong through the air.

She turns, but cannot focus through her tears,

Or recognise the Gardener standing there.

She hardly hears his gentle question ‘Why,

Why are you weeping?’, or sees the play of light

That brightens as she chokes out her reply

‘They took my love away, my day is night’

And then she hears her name, she hears Love say

The Word that turns her night, and ours, to Day.

Republished with gracious permission from Malcolm Guite’s website.

This essay was first published here in April 2022.

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Malcolm Guite, a poet, theologian, and songwriter, is Life Fellow, and former Chaplain, of Girton College (Cambridge) where he also teaches for the Divinity Faculty. He lectures widely in England and North America on theology and literature. Revd. Dr. Guite has published poetry, theology, and literary criticism, and worked as a librettist. His books include Word in the Wilderness, Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination, and Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.