Ye sleeping buds, break Open your green cerements, and wake To fragrant blossoming for His sweet sake.

The speaker addresses dormant flower buds as if they could hear, urging them to “wake” and unfold. The striking phrase “green cerements” (cerements are burial shrouds) casts the bud’s casing as a kind of living tomb, so blossoming becomes a miniature resurrection. The final line—“for His sweet sake”—frames the natural awakening as an act of devotion, suggesting that beauty and fragrance are offerings to God rather than merely seasonal phenomena. The passage thus blends spring imagery with Christian spiritual symbolism: renewal, emergence from deathlike sleep, and the sanctification of ordinary growth into praise.