Throughout the Middle Ages, the text and its rather eerie but joyfully-bursting-with-confidence Dorian chant tone was used as an Easter sequence to introduce the Gospel reading.
Herbert lets the title of the poem lead in two different directions—to point both to the time of the Resurrection and to the mourner’s dawning realization of the significance of Christ’s rising.
’Tis the spring of souls today: Christ has burst His prison And from three days’ sleep in death As a sun has risen
You only get to die once. Practice scorning death now so that you regard it with the proper contempt when the time comes.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.
