George Herbert was a well-known poet in the early 17th Century. I guess that many of us will remember him for some well-loved hymns that are sung even now, in places where hymns (and not just ‘worship songs’) are sung. New English Hymnal uses four of his hymns, beginning ‘Teach me, my God and King, in all things thee to see’, King of Glory, King of peace, I will love thee’, Let all the world in every corner sing, my God and King’ and his interpretation of the 23rd Psalm, The God of Love my shepherd is’.
Many of us would have treasured the lines ‘Seven whole days, not one in seven, I will praise thee’; ‘A man who looks on glass, on it may stay his eye; or if he pleaseth, through it pass and then the heaven espy’; ‘A servant with this clause [for thy sake] makes drudgery divine; who sweeps a room as for thy laws, makes that and the action fine.’ And so on.
As Mark Oakley points out in his book on George Herbert’s poems, ‘My Sour Sweet Days’, “Like the parables of Jesus, [Herbert’s poems] often do their work using images of day-to-day life and in a familiar voice…” Indeed, in his only prose book, The Country Parson, Herbert advises rural clergymen that ordinary things such as ploughs, leaven, or dances, could be made to "serve for lights even of Heavenly Truths”!
Although most of us remember his hymns, he was an acclaimed poet, whose poems were of many and varied forms. He would play with forms and rhymes to enhance his message. ‘Easter Wings’ is an exotic example of this, as seen in this illustration.
They are mainly about God and the condition of the human heart and mind. It is said that they were read and appreciated by people of faith, and of no faith: by Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Donne and so on. Indeed he lived in the same age as Shakespeare and Milton.
A constant thread through his poems is that God is his friend, not a distant avenging being. One critic has referred to this idea as a revising of “the conventional vertical address to God [high up in heaven] to a horizontal addressing of an intimate friend [who is by one’s side]. It would seem that to him God was synonymous with love. His famous poem ‘Love (III)’ is a testimony to that. Why did he not use God instead of Love in this poem, one might ask, but had he done so, its universal appeal would have been diminished.
George Herbert had been born in a noble household and educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. Before he was ordained as he expected to after University, he oratory skills found him a place as a Parliamentarian, and it was only at the age of 36 that he became a clergyman. His ordained ministry was cut short after only three years, when he died in 1633, at the age 40. How much more the world of poetry would have gained, had he lived for three score years and ten!
Easter Wings
Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poore:
With thee
O let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.
My tender age in sorrow did beginne
And still with sicknesses and shame.
Thou didst so punish sinne,
That I became
Most thinne.
With thee
Let me combine,
And feel thy victorie:
For, if I imp my wing on thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.
Love
Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
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