Easter Song
I
Got
me
flowers
to
straw
Thy
way,
I
got
me
boughs
off
many
a
tree;
But
Thou
wast
up
by
break
of
day,
And
brought’st
Thy
sweets
along
with
Thee.
The
sunne
arising
in
the
East,
Though
he
give
light,
and
th’
East
perfume,
If
they
should
offer
to
contest
With
Thy
arising,
they
presume.
Can
there
be
any
day
but
this,
Though
many
sunnes
to
shine
endeavour?
We
count
three
hundred,
but
we
misse:
There
is
but
one,
and
that
one
ever.
George Herbert
George Herbert, (born April 3, 1593, Montgomery Castle, Wales—died March 1, 1633, Bemerton, Wiltshire, Eng.), English religious poet, a major metaphysical poet, notable for the purity and effectiveness of his choice of words. A younger brother of Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, a notable secular metaphysical poet, George in 1610 sent his mother for New Year’s two sonnets on the theme that the love of God is a fitter subject for verse than the love of woman, a foreshadowing of his poetic and vocational bent.