Song of the Day - 13th April

Today is Palm Sunday, when Christians celebrate Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, an event mentioned in each of the four Gospels. Its name originates from the palm branches waved by the crowd to greet and honour Jesus Christ as he entered the city. Palm Sunday marks the first day of Holy Week.

The symbolism of the donkey refers to the Eastern tradition that a donkey is an animal of peace, unlike the horse which is the animal of war. A king would have ridden a horse when he was bent on war and ridden a donkey to symbolize his arrival in peace. Christ's entry to Jerusalem would have thus symbolized his entry as the Prince of Peace, not as a war-waging king.

In most Christian rites, Palm Sunday is celebrated by the blessing and distribution of palm branches (or the branches of other, native trees), representing the palm branches that the crowd scattered before Christ as he rode into Jerusalem. These palms are sometimes woven into crosses.

Today's song is a setting of a poem called "Palm Sunday" by Welsh physician and poet Henry Vaughan (1621—1695). 

Palm Sunday

By Henry Vaughan

Come, drop your branches, strow the way,

Plants of the day!

Whom sufferings make most green and gay.

The King of grief, the man of sorrow

Weeping still, like the wet morrow,

Your shades and freshness comes to borrow.

Put on, put on your best array;

Let the joyed road make holy-day,

And flowers that into fields do stray,

Or secret groves, keep the highway.

Trees, flowers and herbs, birds, beasts and stones,

That since man fell, expect with groans

To see the Lamb, which all at ones,

Lift up your heads and leave your moans!

For here comes he

Whose death will be

Man's life, and your full liberty.

Hark! how the children shrill and high

Hosanna cry,

Their joys provoke the distant sky,

Where thrones and seraphins reply,

And their own angels shine and sing

In a bright ring:

Such young, sweet mirth

Makes heaven and earth

Join in a joyful symphony.

The harmless, young and happy ass,

Seen long before this came to pass,

Is in these joys an high partaker

Ordained, and made to bear his Maker.

Dear feast of palms, of flowers and dew!

Whose fruitful dawn sheds hopes and lights;

Thy bright solemnities did shew

The third glad day through two sad nights.

I'll get me up before the sun,

I'll cut me boughs off many a tree,

And all alone full early run

To gather flowers to welcome thee.

Then like the palm, though wrong, I'll bear,

I will be still a child, still meek

As the poor ass, which the proud jeer,

And only my dear Jesus seek.

If I lose all, and must endure

The proverbed griefs of holy Job,

I care not, so I may secure

But one green branch and a white robe.