‘Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen’

“There is a stage in a child’s life at which it cannot separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas or Easter. I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began ‘Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen.’ This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and admirable piety. But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of Easter; chocolate eggs will no longer seem sacramental. And once he has distinguished he must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat. They will have taken on an independent, and therefore a soon withering, life.”  ~C. S. Lewis

My Song Is Love Unknown is a hymn by Samuel Crossman, written in 1664.

My song is love unknown,

My Saviour’s love to me;

Love to the loveless shown,

That they might lovely be.

O who am I, that for my sake

My Lord should take frail flesh and die?

He came from His blest throne

Salvation to bestow;

But men made strange, and none

The longed-for Christ would know:

But O! my Friend, my Friend indeed,

Who at my need His life did spend.

Sometimes they strew His way,

And His sweet praises sing;

Resounding all the day

Hosannas to their King:

Then “Crucify!” is all their breath,

And for His death they thirst and cry.

Why, what hath my Lord done?

What makes this rage and spite?

He made the lame to run,

He gave the blind their sight,

Sweet injuries! Yet they at these

Themselves displease, and ’gainst Him rise.

They rise and needs will have

My dear Lord made away;

A murderer they save,

The Prince of life they slay,

Yet cheerful He to suffering goes,

That He His foes from thence might free.

Here might I stay and sing,

No story so divine;

Never was love, dear King!

Never was grief like Thine.

This is my Friend, in Whose sweet praise

I all my days could gladly spend.