The speaker has gathered flowers and leafy branches to strew before Christ on Easter morning, only to find that Christ rose before dawn—and brought his own fragrance with him. There’s a humbled, delighted surprise in that moment: even the sun, with all its light and Eastern perfumes, would be foolish to compete with this arising. The mood is intimate and awed, as human effort stands gently upstaged by grace. Then the poem’s thought expands. We may count hundreds of days, yet all that counting misses the truth: there is really only one day, and that single day—the resurrection—is endless. The speaker feels a quiet, exultant wonder, as if time itself has been folded into a permanent Easter. Herbert turns a simple act of devotion into a realization that Christ’s rising isn’t one event among many, but the eternal ground beneath all our passing hours.
Easter Song — Summary
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.