A sweeter fifth Sunday of Easter

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever:

the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold:

sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

   Psalm 19.9,10 (in the version Herbert, Watts and Rosetti knew)

 

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.

   From George Herbert’s Easter (among the dozen poems I use most often)

 

Blest Jesus, what delicious Fare!

How sweet thine entertainments are!

Never did Angels taste above,

Redeeming grace or dying love.

   From Issac Watts’ From my thoughts vain world be gone (the verse engraved on a Communion flagon in Haworth Church, and quoted in this Blog before)

 

When I was young I deemed that sweets are sweet:
But now I deem some searching bitters are
Sweeter than sweets, and more refreshing far,
And to be relished more, and more desired,
And more to be pursued on eager feet,
On feet untired, and still on feet though tired.

   The end of one of Christina Rosetti’s Sonnets of Later Life (among the dozen poems I use most often)

 

Begin with richness in the mouth                             

like date-palm fruit, let sweetness speak,                

let each truth, each re-telling, make
guest-ready all our shelters…

   The beginning of my Sukkot poem, responding to the palm branch of the booths representing the taste of the Torah (quoted in this Blog before)