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Sunday
Thanks to Victoria Emily Jones’s Art and Theology website, I now know about the medieval poem “Easter Song,” written in Latin by the 9th century Irish monk Sedulius Scottus. Although Scottus was driven out of his Irish monastery by Norse invaders and ended up in current day France (the city of Liège), his poem features much of the intense nature imagery that we associate with Celtic Christianity:
Easter Song
By Sedulius Scottus
Translated by Helen Waddel
Last night did Christ the Sun rise from the dark,
The mystic harvest of the fields of God,
And now the little wandering tribes of bees
Are brawling in the scarlet flowers abroad.
The winds are soft with birdsong; all night long
Darkling the nightingale her descant told,
And now inside church doors the happy folk
The Alleluia chant a hundredfold.
O Father of thy folk, be thine by right
The Easter joy, the threshold of the light.
I love the idea of seeing Easter as “a mystic harvest of the fields of God.” The lyric throbs with life, from brawling bees to scarlet flowers to winds “soft with birdsong.” During the night, the nightingale “her descant told,” and now we witness “Christ the Sun rise from the dark.”
In such a vibrant setting, the “alleluia chant” pours spontaneously forth “a hundredfold.”
