An Easter Song

An Easter Song

by Susan Coolidge

A song of sunshine through the rain,

Of spring across the snow,

A balm to heal the hurts of pain,

A peace surpassing woe.

Lift up your heads, ye sorrowing ones,

And be ye glad of heart.

For Calvary and Easter Day,

Earth's saddest day and gladdest day.

Were just one day apart!

With shudder of despair and loss

The world's deep heart was wrung.

As lifted high upon his cross

The Lord of Glory hung,

When rocks were rent, ghostly forms

Stole forth in street and mart;

But Calvary and Easter day.

Earth's blackest day and whitest day,

Were just one day apart!

No hint or whisper stirred the air

To tell what joy should be;

The sad disciples, grieving there.

Nor help nor hope could see.

Yet all the while the glad, near sun

Made ready its swift dart,

And Calvary and Easter Day,

The darkest day and brightest day,

Were just one day apart!

Oh, when the strife of tongues is loud,

And the heart of hope beats low.

When the prophets prophesy of ill.

And the mourners come and go,

In this sure thought let us abide.

And keep and stay our heart,

That Calvary and Easter Day

Earth's heaviest day and happiest day.

Were but one day apart!

While It Is Yet Still Dark...

       Amid the confusion of the early records which tell about the great event which Easter celebrates one thing stands out very clear. No human eye saw the resurrection of Jesus or watched the inscrutable process. The Christian witnesses bore testimony only to the accomplished fact. The change from death to life culminated in the obscurity of the tomb. " While it was yet dark," there came, according to the most philosophical of the Gospels, anxious watchers who found the transformation already complete and the tomb empty. The darkness which shrouded the event is paralleled by the confusion and uncertainty of the conflicting testimony that has reached us. In fact the whole course of Christian beginnings lies shrouded in the mystery of indefiniteness and the shadows of the unknown.

       But all great beginnings are thus conditioned and surrounded. Man becomes conscious of the result long after the causes have apparently ceased to operate. He sees the product after the early stages of the process have receded into the dim past. Only the scantiest remains mark the pathway of early developments, and the highest intelligence is necessary to descry the scraps of evidence and by comparison and imagination reconstruct the methods and movements of these living forces.

       Nestled in the darkness of mother earth the seed takes on the new life which is first observed springing in vigor from the soil. Out of the mothering womb of time has come forth the human race through its various stages, progressing through barbarism, primitive civilization, and the historic era.

"Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark..."
Empty Tomb drawing from Christian Clip Art Review.

       Since man began to think upon the past he has evolved unnumbered theories of his beginning, and still to the most instructed the early stages in each onward course of development must be approached through a twilight that ends in darkness. The rude beginnings of his culture are buried beneath the rubbish heaps of time. The institutions of religion, home and government we know only in their higher forms. Language, art and thought can be studied in their monuments alone. The keenest and most critical investigations have only partially revealed the successive steps of Hebraism and the founding of Christianity. Those centuries in which directive forces were forming the incipient movements which have culminated in what we call western civilization are often termed the Dark Ages. On the whole we must conclude that the great forces operating in society and in life conceal their most significant phases, those phases which carry the greatest import for the future, from the contemporary eyes of men. We cannot " look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not." While it is yet dark the great movements of the future are being planned and the first steps toward the realization of the plans are being taken.

       Around us at this Easter time the darkness and confusion of human affairs are almost beyond parallel. A crisis in history has, no doubt, been reached. We seem to see not only the disruption of international and national life, but the clashing ideals of races, the spread and deepening of hatred and strife, the failure of human capacity for organization to hold in check the elemental passions and aspirations of mankind, and even the breakdown of Christianity itself.

       Nevertheless, the seeds of a new and grander future have doubtless been already sown. The ways of nature and human development lead us to expect that this is so. Life is positive, death is negative. The breakup and sloughing off of the old and outworn may appear as the darkness of dissolution, but the stirrings of a new life to result in a higher order are scarcely to be apprehended until the growth directed by the Unseen Mind has brought some reorganization out of the old chaos." Out of the cradle endlessly rocking " come the strength and wisdom that shape and advance the world's destinies. The patient, brooding spirit of man, inspired by hope and faith in the Divine Order, will yet bring to power and dominion the living principles of international brotherhood and service now obscured in the bitterness and darkness of war and racial strife. Future generations will surely say: "While it was yet dark" we discerned the birth throes of a new world order. by Charles E. Hesselgrave

• From The Village Church -  Racial Reconciliation - Matt Chandler, Racial Reconciliation - Anthony Moore,  Racial Reconciliation - Beau Hughes

I loved them so,

That when the Elder Shepherd of the fold

Came, covered with the storm, and pale and cold,

And begged for one of my sweet lambs to hold.

I bad Him go.

He claimed the pet-

A little fondling thing, that to my breast

Clung always, either in quiet or unrest-

I thought of all my lambs I loved him best,

And yet- and yet-

I laid him down

In those white, shrouded arms, with bitter tears;

For some voice told me that, in after years,

He should know naught of passion, grief or fears,

As I had known.

The Boy and The Angel

The Boy and The Angel 

by Robert Browning

Morning, evening, noon, and night,
" Praise God ! " sang Theocrite.

Then to his poor trade he turned,
Whereby the daily meal was earned.

Hard he labored, long and well;
O'er his work the boy's curls fell.

But ever, at each period,
He stopped and sang, " Praise God!"

Then back again his curls he threw,
And cheerful turned to work anew.

Said Blaise, the listening monk, "Well done;"
I doubt not thou art heard my son :

" As well as if thy voice to-day
Were praising God, the Pope's great way.

" This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome
Praises God from Peter's dome."

Said Theocrite, " Would God that I
Might praise him that great way, and die!"

Night passed, day shone,
And Theocrite was gone.

With God a day endures alway,
A thousand years are but a day.

God said in heaven, " Nor day nor night
Now brings the voice of my delight."

Then Gabriel, like a rainbow's birth.
Spread his wings and sank to earth;

Entered, in flesh, the empty cell.
Lived there, and played the craftsman well;

And morning, evening, noon and night.
Praised God in place of Theocrite.

And from a boy to youth he grew:
The man put off the stripling's hue:

The man matured and fell away
Into the season of decay:

And ever o'er the trade he bent.
And ever lived on earth content.

(He did God's will; to him, all one
If on the earth or in the sun.)

God said, " A praise is in mine ear;
There is no doubt in it, no fear:

"So sing old worlds, and so
New worlds that from my footstool go.

"Clearer loves sound other ways:
I miss my little human praise."

Then forth sprang Gabriel's wings, off fell
The flesh disguise, remained the cell.

'Twas Easter Day: he flew to Rome,
And paused above Saint Peter's dome.

In the tiring-room close by
The greater outer gallery,

With his holy vestments, dight.
Stood the new Pope, Theocrite:

And all his past career
Came back upon him clear,

Since when, a boy, he plied his trade,
Till on his life the sickness weighed;

And in his cell, when death drew near,
An angel in a dream brought cheer:

And rising from the sickness drear,
He grew a priest, and now stood here.

To the East with praise he turned.
And on his sight the angel burned.

"I bore thee from thy craftsman's cell,
I set thee here; I did not well.

"Vainly I left my angel-sphere.
Vain was thy dream of many a year.

" Thy voice's praise seemed weak; it dropped,
Creation's chorus stopped!

" Go back and praise again
The early way while I remain. 

" With that weak voice of our disdain,
Take up creation's pausing strain.

Back to the cell and poor employ:
Resume the craftsman and the boy!"

Theocrite grew old at home;
Gabriel dwelt in Peter's dome.

One vanished as the other died:
They sought God side by side.

Egg Rolling In Washington Over 100 Years Ago...

       March and April in Washington spell for the adult the perfection of a climate which at its best no capital on earth can surpass. Color, fragrance, and an almost indefinable sense that the appropriate necessary mood is one of languid leisure are pervasive. The spring odors and flowers seem suddenly to flood the gardens and lawns. In the tiny six-by-two bed under a bay-window and in the stretches of living green by the river the daffodils have succeeded the crocus; hyacinths and flaring tulips fill the borders, and even the stems in the hedges are full of color. Over every tree there is a smoky veil where the swelling leaf-buds have blurred the winter tracery of bare twigs against the sky, but are not yet heavy enough to cast a shade.

       Only the children seem energetic, especially on Easter  Monday, the great day for Washington babies. Along Pennsylvania Avenue they stream‚ well dressed, nurse-attended darlings mingling with the raggedest little poor children that ever snatched an egg from a market-basket. The wide street looks as if baby-blossom time had come, for there are hundreds of children who on this special afternoon storm the grounds of the White House for their annual egg-rolling. Long ago the sport took place on the terraces below the Capitol, and a visitor to the city then wrote:

       "At first the children sit sedately in long rows; each has brought a basket of gay-colored hard-boiled eggs, and those on the upper terrace send them rolling to the line on the next below, and these pass on the ribbon-like streams to other hundreds at the foot, who scramble for the hopping eggs and hurry panting to the top to start them down again. And as the sport warms those on top who have rolled all the eggs they brought finally roll themselves, shrieking with laughter. Now comes a swirl of curls and ribbons and furbelows, somebody's dainty maid indifferent to bumps and grass stains. A set of boys who started in a line of six with joined hands are trying to come down in somersaults without breaking the chain. On all sides the older folk stand by to watch the games of this infant Carnival which comes to an end only when the children are forced away by fatigue to the point of exhaustion, or by parental order."

       When the games proved too hard a test for the grass on the Capitol terraces. Congress stopped the practice, and the President opened the slope back of the White House. No grown person is admitted unless accompanied by a child, but even under this restriction the annual crowd is great enough to threaten the survival of the event.

This film of babies tossing eggs for Easter was made 

by Thomas Edison, over 100 years ago!

• A Unusual White House Tradition
• The Easter Egg Roll
• More Egg Rolling footage at Thrifty Scissors and see twins at White House egg roll from years gone by...

To Violets

To Violets

by Robbert Herrick

Welcome, maids of honor,

You do bring

In the Spring,

And wait upon her.

She has virgins many.

Fresh and fair ;

Yet you are

More sweet than any.

Y' are the Maiden Posies,

And so graced.

To be placed,

'Fore damask roses.

Yet though thus respected.

By and by

Ye do lie,

Poor girls, neglected.

"Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his love endures forever." 1 Chronicles 16:54

May

MAY

by James Gates Percival

I FEEL a newer life in every gale;

The winds, that fan the flowers,

And with their welcome breathings fill the

sail,

Tell of serener hours, --

Of hours that glide unfelt away

Beneath the sky of May.

The spirit of the gentle south- wind calls

From his blue throne of air,

And where his whispering voice in music falls,

Beauty is budding there;

The bright ones of the valley break

Their slumbers, and awake.

The waving verdure rolls along the plain,

And the wide forest weaves.

To welcome back its playful mates again,

A canopy of leaves;

And from its darkening shadow floats

A gush of trembling notes.