Poem for Easter Sunday

Love is Come Again by J.M.C.Crum (1872 – 1958)

Now the green blade riseth, from the buried grain,
Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

In the grave they laid him, Love whom men had slain,
Thinking that never he would wake again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

Forth he came at Easter, like the risen grain,
he that for three days in the grave had lain;
Quick from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,
Thy touch can call us back to life again,
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

It is easy for those of us who live in the northern hemisphere to connect the new life springing up around us in creation with the new risen life Jesus brings, as he defies death and bursts from the grave! Whatever you may feel at this hard time, however dead and bare the field of your heart may be, hold on to the fact that Jesus has defied death, the worst that evil could do, and is with us now, always.

Nothing can stop his love reaching up through to the coldest, bleakest places on earth. We are practising social isolation because of a deadly infectious virus. But Jesus is alive and we need to keep as close to him as we can, because his loving risen life is contagious!

This Easter carol was written for the Oxford Book of Carols in 1928 and is set to a lovely lilting French tune: Noel Nouvelet.

-Tina Lamb