Christina Rossetti - A Better Resurrection - Poem for the 6th Sunday after Epiphany, Year C

The Englewood Review of Books curates a weekly series of classic and contemporary poems that resonate with the themes of the lectionary readings. Here is one of the poems for this coming Sunday (More poems for the 6th Sunday after Epiphany, Year C can be found here)

A Better Resurrection

Christina Rossetti

to accompany the lectionary reading: 1 Corinthians 15:12-20

I have no wit, no words, no tears;

My heart within me like a stone

Is numb’d too much for hopes or fears;

Look right, look left, I dwell alone;

I lift mine eyes, but dimm’d with grief

No everlasting hills I see;

My life is in the falling leaf:

O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,

My harvest dwindled to a husk:

Truly my life is void and brief

And tedious in the barren dusk;

My life is like a frozen thing,

No bud nor greenness can I see:

Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;

O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,

A broken bowl that cannot hold

One drop of water for my soul

Or cordial in the searching cold;

Cast in the fire the perish’d thing;

Melt and remould it, till it be

A royal cup for Him, my King:

O Jesus, drink of me.

*** This poem is in the public domain,

and may be read in a live-streamed worship service.

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was an English writer and poet. She was widely praised by critics as the foremost female poet of the day, and wrote the words of two well known Christmas carols  in England. For over a decade, Rosetti worked voluntarily in a refuge for ex-prostitutes.  (via Wikipedia)