Spiritual Sunday – Palm Sunday
How wonderful that Palm Sunday, the commencement of Holy Week, falls on the same day as the spring equinox this year. Easter is often associated with the regeneration of spring, and the 2016 calendar is cooperating.
To celebrate, I share a lovely Palm Sunday poem by Welsh poet Henry Vaughan, Britain’s preeminent 17th century nature poet and a forerunner of William Wordsworth. Labeling himself “the king of grief, the man of sorrow,” Vaughan calls upon palm trees to lend him their shades and freshness, just as Jesus’s followers turned to palms to express their joy upon his entry into Jerusalem.
It is clear that the poet is really addressing himself as he addresses the “trees, flowers & herbs; birds, beasts & stones” that have been groaning since man’s fall. After all, it is only humans that groan. Seeing himself as a “humble flower,” he says that today is the day for such flowers to leave their fields and secret groves to come and join in the joyful celebration.
Incidentally, the unexpected inclusion of “stones” in his list refers to how Jesus rebuked the Pharisees, who objected to Jesus being celebrated as “the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” Jesus replied, “I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” (Luke 19:40) As Vaughan sees it, he is called upon to cry out in joy with the rest of creation.
Still struggling to be joyous, however, he then he tells the plants/himself to take inspiration from the children who cried “Hosannah” as they strewed the palms. I have no doubt that Wordsworth had this stanza in mind when he wrote about the shepherd boy in Intimations of Immortality, and the comparison is clarifying. Just as Vaughan is fighting against gloom, a depressed Wordsworth feels himself rebuked by the happy shouts of the boy:
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy.
Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
Oh evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the Children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers…
An image of joy is not enough to entirely lift Vaughan out of his dark thoughts, however. He also needs an image of sacrifice. His attention therefore turns from the children to the ass that bore Jesus, and he wishes that he were that derided beast of burden. He resolves to be as meek as the ass, as the children, and as the palm fronds over which Jesus rides. Then it will not matter whether he bears the sorrows of Job.
In the lovely final line, he combines an image of life with an image of purity. All that matters, he says, is that he secure “but one green branch and a white robe.”
Palm Sunday
By Henry Vaughan
Come, drop your branches, strew the way
Plants of the day!
Whom sufferings make most green and gay.
The king of grief, the man of sorrow
Weeping still, like the wet morrow,
Your shades and freshness comes to borrow.
Put on, put on your best array;
Let the joy’d road make holiday,
And flowers that into fields do stray,
Or secret groves, keep the highway.
Trees, flowers & herbs; birds, beasts & stones,
That since man fell, expect with groans
To see the lamb, which all at once,
Lift up your heads and leave your moans!
For here comes he
Whose death will be
Man’s life, and your full liberty.
Hark! how the children shrill and high
“Hosanna” cry,
Their joys provoke the distant sky,
Where thrones and Seraphim reply,
And their own Angels shine and sing
In a bright ring:
Such young, sweet mirth
Makes heaven and earth
Join in a joyful symphony,
The harmless, young and happy ass,
Seen long before this came to pass,
Is in these joys a high partaker
Ordained, and made to bear his Maker.
Dear feast of palms, of flowers and dew!
Whose fruitful dawn sheds hopes and lights;
Thy bright solemnities did show,
The third glad day through two sad nights.
I’ll get me up before the sun,
I’ll cut me boughs off many a tree,
And all alone full early run
To gather flowers to welcome thee.
Then like the palm, though wrong, I’ll bear,
I will be still a child, still meek
As the poor ass, which the proud jeer,
And only my dear Jesus seek.
If I lose all, and must endure.
The proverb’d griefs of holy Job,
I care not, so I may secure
But one green branch and a white robe.