GEORGE HERBERT.
But, with my hand on the lock, I shrink from opening the door. Here comes
a poet indeed! and how am I to show him due honour? With his book humbly,
doubtfully offered, with the ashes of the poems of his youth fluttering
in the wind of his priestly garments, he crosses the threshold. Or
rather, for I had forgotten the symbol of my book, let us all go from our
chapel to the choir, and humbly ask him to sing that he may make us
worthy of his song.
In George Herbert there is poetry enough and to spare: it is the
household bread of his being. If I begin with that which first in the
nature of things ought to be demanded of a poet, namely, Truth,
Revelation--George Herbert offers us measure pressed down and running
over. But let me speak first of that which first in time or order of
appearance we demand of a poet, namely music. For inasmuch as verse is
for the ear, not for the eye, we demand a good hearing first. Let no one
undervalue it. The heart of poetry is indeed truth, but its garments are
music, and the garments come first in the process of revelation. The
music of a poem is its meaning in sound as distinguished from word--its
meaning in solution, as it were, uncrystallized by articulation. The
music goes before the fuller revelation, preparing its way. The sound of
a verse is the harbinger of the truth contained therein. If it be a right
poem, this will be true. Herein Herbert excels. It will be found
impossible to separate the music of his words from the music of the
thought which takes shape in their sound.
I got me flowers to strow thy way,
I got me boughs off many a tree;
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought'st thy sweets along with thee.
And the gift it enwraps at once and reveals is, I have said, truth of the
deepest. Hear this song of divine service. In every song he sings a
spiritual fact will be found its fundamental life, although I may quote
this or that merely to illustrate some peculiarity of mode.
_The Elixir_ was an imagined liquid sought by the old physical
investigators, in order that by its means they might turn every common
metal into gold, a pursuit not quite so absurd as it has since appeared.
They called this something, when regarded as a solid, _the Philosopher's
Stone_. In the poem it is also called a _tincture_.
THE ELIXIR.
Teach me, my God and King,
In all things thee to see;
And what I do in anything,
To do it as for thee;
Not rudely, as a beast,
To run into an action;
But still to make thee prepossest,
And give it his perfection. _its._
A man that looks on glass,
On it may stay his eye;
Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heaven spy.
All may of thee partake:
Nothing can be so mean,
Which with his tincture--_for thy sake_-- _its._
Will not grow bright and clean.
A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room as for thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine.
This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold;
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told.
With a conscience tender as a child's, almost diseased in its tenderness,
and a heart loving as a woman's, his intellect is none the less powerful.
Its movements are as the sword-play of an alert, poised, well-knit,
strong-wristed fencer with the rapier, in which the skill impresses one
more than the force, while without the force the skill would be
valueless, even hurtful, to its possessor. There is a graceful humour
with it occasionally, even in his most serious poems adding much to their
charm. To illustrate all this, take the following, the title of which
means _The Retort_.
THE QUIP.
The merry World did on a day
With his train-bands and mates agree
To meet together where I lay,
And all in sport to jeer at me.
First Beauty crept into a rose;
Which when I plucked not--"Sir," said she,
"Tell me, I pray, whose hands are those?"[98]
_But thou shall answer, Lord, for me._
Then Money came, and, chinking still--
"What tune is this, poor man?" said he:
"I heard in music you had skill."
_But thou shall answer, Lord, for me._
Then came brave Glory puffing by
In silks that whistled--who but he?
He scarce allowed me half an eye;
_But thou shall answer, Lord, for me._
Then came quick Wit-and-Conversation,
And he would needs a comfort be,
And, to be short, make an oration:
_But thou shalt answer, Lord, for me._
Yet when the hour of thy design
To answer these fine things, shall come,
Speak not at large--say I am thine;
And then they have their answer home.
Here is another instance of his humour. It is the first stanza of a poem
to _Death_. He is glorying over Death as personified in a skeleton.
Death, thou wast once an uncouth, hideous thing--
Nothing but bones,
The sad effect of sadder groans:
Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing.
No writer before him has shown such a love to God, such a childlike
confidence in him. The love is like the love of those whose verses came
first in my volume. But the nation had learned to think more, and new
difficulties had consequently arisen. These, again, had to be undermined
by deeper thought, and the discovery of yet deeper truth had been the
reward. Hence, the love itself, if it had not strengthened, had at least
grown deeper. And George Herbert had had difficulty enough in himself;
for, born of high family, by nature fitted to shine in that society where
elegance of mind, person, carriage, and utterance is most appreciated,
and having indeed enjoyed something of the life of a courtier, he had
forsaken all in obedience to the voice of his higher nature. Hence the
struggle between his tastes and his duties would come and come again,
augmented probably by such austere notions as every conscientious man
must entertain in proportion to his inability to find God in that in
which he might find him. From this inability, inseparable in its varying
degrees from the very nature of growth, springs all the asceticism of
good men, whose love to God will be the greater as their growing insight
reveals him in his world, and their growing faith approaches to the
giving of thanks in everything.
When we have discovered the truth that whatsoever is not of faith is sin,
the way to meet it is not to forsake the human law, but so to obey it as
to thank God for it. To leave the world and go into the desert is not
thus to give thanks: it may have been the only way for this or that man,
in his blameless blindness, to take. The divine mind of George Herbert,
however, was in the main bent upon discovering God everywhere.
The poem I give next, powerfully sets forth the struggle between liking
and duty of which I have spoken. It is at the same time an instance of
wonderful art in construction, all the force of the germinal thought kept
in reserve, to burst forth at the last. He calls it--meaning by the word,
_God's Restraint_--
THE COLLAR.
I struck the board, and cried "No more!--
I will abroad.
What! shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free--free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it! There was corn
Before my tears did drown it!
Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it?
No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
All wasted?
Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures. Leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit, and not. Forsake thy cage,
Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made--and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
Away! Take heed--
I will abroad.
Call in thy death's-head there. Tie up thy fears.
He that forbears
To suit and serve his need,
Deserves his load."
But as I raved, and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Methought I heard one calling "_Child!_"
And I replied, "_My Lord!_"
Coming now to speak of his art, let me say something first about his use
of homeliest imagery for highest thought. This, I think, is in itself
enough to class him with the highest _kind_ of poets. If my reader will
refer to _The Elixir_, he will see an instance in the third stanza, "You
may look at the glass, or at the sky:" "You may regard your action only,
or that action as the will of God." Again, let him listen to the pathos
and simplicity of this one stanza, from a poem he calls _The Flower_. He
has been in trouble; his times have been evil; he has felt a spiritual
old age creeping upon him; but he is once more awake.
And now in age[99] I bud again;
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. O my only light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night!
Again:
Some may dream merrily, but when they wake
They dress themselves and come to thee.
He has an exquisite feeling of lyrical art. Not only does he keep to one
idea in it, but he finishes the poem like a cameo. Here is an instance
wherein he outdoes the elaboration of a Norman trouvère; for not merely
does each line in each stanza end with the same sound as the
corresponding line in every other stanza, but it ends with the very same
word. I shall hardly care to defend this if my reader chooses to call it
a whim; but I do say that a large degree of the peculiar musical effect
of the poem--subservient to the thought, keeping it dimly chiming in the
head until it breaks out clear and triumphant like a silver bell in the
last--is owing to this use of the same column of words at the line-ends
of every stanza. Let him who doubts it, read the poem aloud.
AARON.
Holiness on the head;
Light and perfections on the breast;
Harmonious bells below, raising the dead,
To lead them unto life and rest--
Thus are true Aarons drest.
Profaneness in my head;
Defects and darkness in my breast;
A noise of passions ringing me for dead
Unto a place where is no rest--
Poor priest, thus am I drest!
Only another head
I have, another heart and breast,
Another music, making live, not dead,
Without whom I could have no rest--
In him I am well drest.
Christ is my only head,
My alone only heart and breast,
My only music, striking me even dead,
That to the old man I may rest,
And be in him new drest.
So, holy in my head,
Perfect and light in my dear breast,
My doctrine turned by Christ, who is not dead,
But lives in me while I do rest--
Come, people: Aaron's drest.
Note the flow and the ebb of the lines of each stanza--from six to eight
to ten syllables, and back through eight to six, the number of stanzas
corresponding to the number of lines in each; only the poem itself begins
with the ebb, and ends with a full spring-flow of energy. Note also the
perfect antithesis in their parts between the first and second stanzas,
and how the last line of the poem clenches the whole in revealing its
idea--that for the sake of which it was written. In a word, note the
_unity_.
Born in 1593, notwithstanding his exquisite art, he could not escape
being influenced by the faulty tendencies of his age, borne in upon his
youth by the example of his mother's friend, Dr. Donne. A man must be a
giant like Shakspere or Milton to cast off his age's faults. Indeed no
man has more of the "quips and cranks and wanton wiles" of the poetic
spirit of his time than George Herbert, but with this difference from the
rest of Dr. Donne's school, that such is the indwelling potency that it
causes even these to shine with a radiance such that we wish them still
to burn and not be consumed. His muse is seldom other than graceful, even
when her motions are grotesque, and he is always a gentleman, which
cannot be said of his master. We could not bear to part with his most
fantastic oddities, they are so interpenetrated with his genius as well
as his art.
In relation to the use he makes of these faulty forms, and to show that
even herein he has exercised a refraining judgment, though indeed
fancying he has quite discarded in only somewhat reforming it, I
recommend the study of two poems, each of which he calls _Jordan_, though
why I have not yet with certainty discovered.
It is possible that not many of his readers have observed the following
instances of the freakish in his rhyming art, which however result well.
When I say so, I would not be supposed to approve of the freak, but only
to acknowledge the success of the poet in his immediate intent. They are
related to a certain tendency to mechanical contrivance not seldom
associated with a love of art: it is art operating in the physical
understanding. In the poem called _Home_, every stanza is perfectly
finished till the last: in it, with an access of art or artfulness, he
destroys the rhyme. I shall not quarrel with my reader if he calls it the
latter, and regards it as art run to seed. And yet--and yet--I confess I
have a latent liking for the trick. I shall give one or two stanzas out
of the rather long poem, to lead up to the change in the last.
Come, Lord; my head doth burn, my heart is sick,
While thou dost ever, ever stay;
Thy long deferrings wound me to the quick;
My spirit gaspeth night and day.
O show thyself to me,
Or take me up to thee.
Nothing but drought and dearth, but bush and brake,
Which way soe'er I look I see:
Some may dream merrily, but when they wake
They dress themselves and come to thee.
O show thyself to me,
Or take me up to thee.
Come, dearest Lord, pass not this holy season,
My flesh and bones and joints do pray;
And even my verse, when by the rhyme and reason
The word is _stay_,[100] says ever _come_.
O show thyself to me,
Or take me up to thee.
Balancing this, my second instance is of the converse. In all the stanzas
but the last, the last line in each hangs unrhymed: in the last the
rhyming is fulfilled. The poem is called _Denial_. I give only a part of
it.
When my devotions could not pierce
Thy silent ears,
Then was my heart broken as was my verse;
My breast was full of fears
And disorder.
O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue
To cry to thee,
And then not hear it crying! All day long
My heart was in my knee:
But no hearing!
Therefore my soul lay out of sight,
Untuned, unstrung;
My feeble spirit, unable to look right,
Like a nipt blossom, hung
Discontented.
O cheer and tune my heartless breast--
Defer no time;
That so thy favours granting my request,
They and my mind may chime,
And mend my rhyme.
It had been hardly worth the space to point out these, were not the
matter itself precious.
Before making further remark on George Herbert, let me present one of his
poems in which the oddity of the visual fancy is only equalled by the
beauty of the result.
THE PULLEY.
When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessing standing by,
"Let us," said he, "pour on him all we can:
Let the world's riches, which disperséd lie,
Contract into a span."
So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed; then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
_Rest_ in the bottom lay.
"For if I should," said he,
"Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in nature, not the God of nature:
So both should losers be.
"Yet let him keep the rest--
But keep them with repining restlessness:
Let him be rich and weary, that, at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast."
Is it not the story of the world written with the point of a diamond?
There can hardly be a doubt that his tendency to unnatural forms was
encouraged by the increase of respect to symbol and ceremony shown at
this period by some of the external powers of the church--Bishop Laud in
particular. Had all, however, who delight in symbols, a power, like
George Herbert's, of setting even within the horn-lanterns of the more
arbitrary of them, such a light of poetry and devotion that their dull
sides vanish in its piercing shine, and we forget the symbol utterly in
the truth which it cannot obscure, then indeed our part would be to take
and be thankful. But there never has been even a living true symbol which
the dulness of those who will see the truth only in the symbol has not
degraded into the very cockatrice-egg of sectarianism. The symbol is by
such always more or less idolized, and the light within more or less
patronized. If the truth, for the sake of which all symbols exist, were
indeed the delight of those who claim it, the sectarianism of the church
would vanish. But men on all sides call that _the truth_ which is but its
form or outward sign--material or verbal, true or arbitrary, it matters
not which--and hence come strifes and divisions.
Although George Herbert, however, could thus illumine all with his divine
inspiration, we cannot help wondering whether, if he had betaken himself
yet more to vital and less to half artificial symbols, the change would
not have been a breaking of the pitcher and an outshining of the lamp.
For a symbol may remind us of the truth, and at the same time obscure
it--present it, and dull its effect. It is the temple of nature and not
the temple of the church, the things made by the hands of God and not the
things made by the hands of man, that afford the truest symbols of truth.
I am anxious to be understood. The chief symbol of our faith, _the
Cross_, it may be said, is not one of these natural symbols. I
answer--No; but neither is it an arbitrary symbol. It is not a symbol of
_a truth_ at all, but of _a fact_, of the infinitely grandest fact in the
universe, which is itself the outcome and symbol of the grandest Truth.
_The Cross_ is an historical _sign_, not properly _a symbol_, except
through the facts it reminds us of. On the other hand, _baptism_ and the
_eucharist_ are symbols of the loftiest and profoundest kind, true to
nature and all its meanings, as well as to the facts of which they remind
us. They are in themselves symbols of the truths involved in the facts
they commemorate.
Of Nature's symbols George Herbert has made large use; but he would have
been yet a greater poet if he had made a larger use of them still. Then
at least we might have got rid of such oddities as the stanzas for steps
up to the church-door, the first at the bottom of the page; of the lines
shaped into ugly altar-form; and of the absurd Easter wings, made of ever
lengthening lines. This would not have been much, I confess, nor the gain
by their loss great; but not to mention the larger supply of images
graceful with the grace of God, who when he had made them said they were
good, it would have led to the further purification of his taste, perhaps
even to the casting out of all that could untimely move our mirth; until
possibly (for illustration), instead of this lovely stanza, he would have
given us even a lovelier:
Listen, sweet dove, unto my song,
And spread thy golden wings on me;
Hatching my tender heart so long,
Till it get wing, and fly away with thee.
The stanza is indeed lovely, and true and tender and clever as well; yet
who can help smiling at the notion of the incubation of the heart-egg,
although what the poet means is so good that the smile almost vanishes in
a sigh?
There is no doubt that the works of man's hands will also afford many
true symbols; but I do think that, in proportion as a man gives himself
to those instead of studying Truth's wardrobe of forms in nature, so will
he decline from the high calling of the poet. George Herbert was too
great to be himself much injured by the narrowness of the field whence he
gathered his symbols; but his song will be the worse for it in the ears
of all but those who, having lost sight of or having never beheld the
oneness of the God whose creation exists in virtue of his redemption,
feel safer in a low-browed crypt than under "the high embowed roof."
When the desire after system or order degenerates from a need into a
passion, or ruling idea, it closes, as may be seen in many women who are
especial house-keepers, like an unyielding skin over the mind, to the
death of all development from impulse and aspiration. The same thing
holds in the church: anxiety about order and system will kill the life.
This did not go near to being the result with George Herbert: his life
was hid with Christ in God; but the influence of his _profession_, as
distinguished from his work, was hurtful to his calling as a poet. He of
all men would scorn to claim social rank for spiritual service; he of all
men would not commit the blunder of supposing that prayer and praise are
that service of God: they are _prayer_ and _praise_, not _service_; he
knew that God can be served only through loving ministration to his sons
and daughters, all needy of commonest human help: but, as the most devout
of clergymen will be the readiest to confess, there is even a danger to
their souls in the unvarying recurrence of the outward obligations of
their service; and, in like manner, the poet will fare ill if the
conventions from which the holiest system is not free send him soaring
with sealed eyes. George Herbert's were but a little blinded thus; yet
something, we must allow, his poetry was injured by his profession. All
that I say on this point, however, so far from diminishing his praise,
adds thereto, setting forth only that he was such a poet as might have
been greater yet, had the divine gift had free course. But again I rebuke
myself and say, "Thank God for George Herbert."
To rid our spiritual palates of the clinging flavour of criticism, let me
choose another song from his precious legacy--one less read, I presume,
than many. It shows his tendency to asceticism--the fancy of forsaking
God's world in order to serve him; it has besides many of the faults of
the age, even to that of punning; yet it is a lovely bit of art as well
as a rich embodiment of tenderness.
THE THANKSGIVING.
Oh King of grief! a title strange yet true,
To thee of all kings only due!
Oh King of wounds! how shall I grieve for thee,
Who in all grief preventest me? _goest before me._
Shall I weep blood? Why, thou hast wept such store,
That all thy body was one gore.
Shall I be scourgéd, flouted, boxéd, sold?
'Tis but to tell the tale is told.
_My God, my God, why dost thou part from me?_
Was such a grief as cannot be.
Shall I then sing, skipping thy doleful story,
And side with thy triumphant glory?
Shall thy strokes be my stroking? thorns my flower?
Thy rod, my posy?[101] cross, my bower?
But how then shall I imitate thee, and
Copy thy fair, though bloody hand?
Surely I will revenge me on thy love,
And try who shall victorious prove.
If thou dost give me wealth, I will restore
All back unto thee by the poor.
If thou dost give me honour, men shall see
The honour doth belong to thee.
I will not marry; or if she be mine,
She and her children shall be thine.
My bosom-friend, if he blaspheme thy name,
I will tear thence his love and fame.
One half of me being gone, the rest I give
Unto some chapel--die or live.
As for my Passion[102]--But of that anon,
When with the other I have done.
For thy Predestination, I'll contrive
That, three years hence, if I survive,[103]
I'll build a spital, or mend common ways,
But mend my own without delays.
Then I will use the works of thy creation,
As if I used them but for fashion.
The world and I will quarrel; and the year
Shall not perceive that I am here.
My music shall find thee, and every string
Shall have his attribute to sing, _its._
That all together may accord in thee,
And prove one God, one harmony.
If thou shall give me wit, it shall appear;
If thou hast given it me, 'tis here.
Nay, I will read thy book,[104] and never move
Till I have found therein thy love--
Thy art of love, which I'll turn back on thee:
O my dear Saviour, Victory!
Then for my Passion--I will do for that--
Alas, my God! I know not what.
With the preceding must be taken the following, which comes immediately
after it.
THE REPRISAL.
I have considered it, and find
There is no dealing with thy mighty Passion;
For though I die for thee, I am behind:
My sins deserve the condemnation.
O make me innocent, that I
May give a disentangled state and free;
And yet thy wounds still my attempts defy,
For by thy death I die for thee.
Ah! was it not enough that thou
By thy eternal glory didst outgo me?
Couldst thou not grief's sad conquest me allow,
But in all victories overthrow me?
Yet by confession will I come
Into the conquest: though I can do nought
Against thee, in thee I will overcome
The man who once against thee fought.
Even embracing the feet of Jesus, Mary Magdalene or George Herbert must
rise and go forth to do his will.
It will be observed how much George Herbert goes beyond all that have
preceded him, in the expression of feeling as it flows from individual
conditions, in the analysis of his own moods, in the logic of worship, if
I may say so. His utterance is not merely of personal love and grief, but
of the peculiar love and grief in the heart of George Herbert. There may
be disease in such a mind; but, if there be, it is a disease that will
burn itself out. Such disease is, for men constituted like him, the only
path to health. By health I mean that simple regard to the truth, to the
will of God, which will turn away a man's eyes from his own conditions,
and leave God free to work his perfection in him--free, that is, of the
interference of the man's self-consciousness and anxiety. To this
perfection St. Paul had come when he no longer cried out against the body
of his death, no more judged his own self, but left all to the Father,
caring only to do his will. It was enough to him then that God should
judge him, for his will is the one good thing securing all good things.
Amongst the keener delights of the life which is at the door, I look for
the face of George Herbert, with whom to talk humbly would be in bliss a
higher bliss.