Herbert, a seventeenth-century English poet and priest, begins "Easter" by giving orders to himself. "Rise, heart, thy lord is risen" is a pep talk and a pun at once: Christ has risen, so the speaker's heart should too. The poem then works like a rehearsal. It calls on the heart, then the lute, then both together, and in its last two lines admits that even their combined effort falls short. That is its central idea. Human praise can be eager and skilful and still need the God it praises to finish it.
The first stanza borrows from the alchemist's laboratory. "Calcined" means reduced to powder by fierce heat, and Herbert says Christ's death did this to the speaker, burning him down to "dust". Christ's life then turns that dust to "gold", the alchemist's dream. Herbert doesn't stop there. The line goes on, "and, much more, just", and the commas make us step up one rung at a time. Gold is only the start, and moral rightness is worth far more. Poor, ordinary dust becomes something valuable and good, and the speaker has done none of the work, since Christ "takes thee by the hand".
The form is neat and a little playful. Each stanza is built from three rhymed pairs: praise/delays, likewise/rise, dust/just. Long lines of ten syllables alternate with short ones of four, so "Without delays" and "With him may'st rise" are over almost before we've begun. They do what they say, quick and upward. By contrast, "Pleasant and long" in the last stanza is just four syllables, a line promising length that ends at once. Perhaps this is a small joke on the speaker's modest abilities. Herbert also uses the old pronunciation of endings like "calcined" and "stretched" as extra syllables, which keeps the longer lines in steady ten-beat rhythm.
The second stanza turns to the lute, and here the imagery becomes bold. A lute is made of wood, and so was the cross. Herbert says the cross "taught all wood to resound his name / Who bore the same", so every wooden instrument learns its music from Christ's suffering. Then comes the more startling claim that "His stretched sinews taught all strings what key / Is best". Lute strings were traditionally made of gut, so the comparison is almost bodily. The tension of a tuned string echoes the tension of the crucified body, and pain becomes pitch. The speaker must "struggle for thy part / With all thy art", a phrase that makes music sound like effort rather than ease.
In the third stanza the two instruments, heart and lute, are brought together. "Consort" is both a musical term for a group of players and a verb meaning to join. "Twist" suggests strands braided into a stronger cord. Then the speaker mentions "three parts vied and multiplied". This is probably three-part harmony, and the third voice turns out to be the Spirit, though a reader might also hear a hint of the Trinity. The tone shifts here. Until now the poem has been all commands (Rise, Awake, Consort), but "Oh let thy blessed Spirit bear a part" is a plea. The only exclamation in the poem comes just as the speaker's confidence gives way.
The final rhyme is the cleverest. In stanza two, "part" and "art" described the speaker's own effort. They return in the last couplet, but now the Spirit bears "a part" and makes up "our defects with his sweet art". The same rhyme has changed hands, and divine skill replaces human skill. The word "defects" is blunt and honest, and "our" quietly widens the speaker's modesty to everyone.
That is why the poem matters. It is an Easter celebration that doesn't boast. Herbert makes doctrine physical, turning belief into gold, wood, sinews and strings, and he lets the poem's own music admit it is incomplete. A poem about praise ends by asking for help, and that is a surprising, humane way to end a hymn of joy.