Eleanor Farjeon Is best remembered today as the author of “Morning Has Broken”, one of the most beautiful hymns of praise of the 20th century. However, she also knew the excruciating pain of the cross, which makes such praise dearly won and dearly bought.
This is her sonnet to her beloved friend Edward Thomas, killed in battle April 9, 1917.
In the last letter that I had from France
You thanked me for the silver Easter egg
Which I had hidden in the box of apples
You liked to munch beyond all other fruit.
You found the egg the Monday before Easter,
And said, ‘I will praise Easter Monday now –
It was such a lovely morning’. Then you spoke
Of the coming battle and said, ‘This is the eve.
Good-bye. And may I have a letter soon.’
That Easter Monday was a day for praise,
It was such a lovely morning. In our garden
We sowed our earliest seeds, and in the orchard
The apple-bud was ripe. It was the eve.
There are three letters that you will not get.
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