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Sunday
When I read the poetry of Henry Vaughan, I now think of John Gatta’s observation, in his recent book Green Gospel, that we can find God’s immanence in nature. Palm Sunday is one occasion where the idea is accentuated, with John reporting, “So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!’” While Gatta acknowledges that he cannot “pretend to know” “what God’s redemption of all creation might ultimately look like,” he adds, “I know only that a Christian faith worthy of the name must presume that God somehow wills to bring to fulfillment not human beings alone but everything God had ever created, sustained, and esteemed as ‘very good.’”
With this view of nature in mind, I turn to what 17th century Welsh poet Henry Vaughan, whose poetry is filled with God manifesting him or herself in natural phenomena, says about Palm Sunday. I’m hoping for help from readers about what the poet by plant becoming “green and gay” from suffering—is this a Walt Witman-esque idea of death producing the manure that feeds vegetable life?—but we can all relate to Jesus coming to borrow “your shades and freshness.”
Throughout the poem there are references to spring growth and new life. Borrowing John Donne’s punning on “the sun,” Vaughan imagines the palm fronds, after having been laid low in humility, rising again in the Easter season. The poet tells us he would willingly suffer the travails of Job if he could but secure “one green Branch and a white robe.”
Palm Sunday
By Henry Vaughan
Come, drop your branches, strow 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 rode make holy-day,
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 Seraphins 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 an 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 shew,
The third glad day through two sad nights.
l’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 proverbed griefs of holy Job,
I care not, so I may secure
But one green Branch and a white robe.