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Saturday, April 19, 2014

Keeping Sacred Time with Christina Rossetti :: Easter Vigil

During Holy Week, I'll be sharing a daily poem by Christina Rossetti. We often know her for her lovely poetry for children, but she wrote volumes of devotional poetry as well, including a series for the feasts and fasts of this week.  These are the poems I'll be sharing with my own children as we ready our home and our hearts and keep the Church's traditions.  Wishing you a blessed time as you prepare for Easter!


EASTER EVEN
The tempest over and gone, the calm begun,
Lo, "it is finished" and the Strong Man sleeps:
All stars keep vigil watching for the sun,
The moon her vigil keeps.

A garden full of silence and of dew
Beside a virgin cave and entrance stone:
Surely a garden full of Angels too,
Wondering, on watch, alone.

They who cry "Holy, Holy, Holy," still
Veiling their faces round God's Throne above,
May well keep vigil on this heavenly hill
And cry their cry of love,

Adoring God in His new mystery,
Of Love more deep than hell, more strong than death;
Until the day break and the shadows free,
The Shaking and the Breath.

6 comments:

  1. Wonderful series Celeste! Thanks for sharing these poems with us this week. I enjoyed reading each one. Have a blessed Easter Sunday.

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    1. Thank you, Jenny--Happy Easter to your family too!

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  2. I've enjoyed these poems, Celeste. Thank you. I've been reading Rossetti over the last 8 weeks or so but I must be reading from a different collection. You've found quite a few I haven't come across (yet!) She certainly has a large and varied body of work, doesn't she.

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    1. Yes, she has so many more poems than I knew about! These particular ones are from her collection called _Verses_, which I downloaded here:

      http://books.google.com/books?id=SFA1AAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=rossetti+christina+verses&hl=en&sa=X&ei=k6NVU8yGDeemygGF64GABQ&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=rossetti%20christina%20verses&f=false

      I'd really love to get a copy of her complete works. My kids actually really enjoyed all the ones we read this week!

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    2. I've been reading from one called Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems. I think I downloaded it from Gutenberg. I wasn't sure which one to start with, so I just picked one pretty much at random. Thanks to the link for the one you've been reading from.

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    3. We started with the sweet picture book collection "Fly Away, Fly Away, Over the Sea," and I also got the Everyman's Library edition of her selected poems from the library. I love those little Everyman editions--they just feel so nice in the hand. :) Anyway, at that back of that book, there is a section of her devotional poetry, and that led me looking for more and eventually I found Verses on Google Books. I think I'll grab the one you mentioned--I have wanted to read Goblin Market, as we haven't yet.

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