George Herbert is pretty much my favourite seventeenth-century poet. While I have a lot of time for Donne, and even more for Marvell (who, after all, references the "conversion of the Jews", slipping in some eschatology under the radar), neither of them approaches the broad devotion and frankness which I find in Herbert's work.
My current favourite is his "Denial", a meditation on those times when God's face is like flint and hidden from us. I love the comparison Herbert makes in the poem: both mind and verse are disconsolate until God's intervention in the final stanza. There's therefore a lovely rhyming scheme which is consistently frustrated up until the final couplet, when God "mends my rime". Partly, however, I find Herbert's poem describes exactly how I currently feel in my walk with God. I'm not sure whether this is as a result of over work, or a symptom of something more serious, with the following becoming something of a prayer for me. Hopefully the cloud will break in the desert soon. Anyway, on to Herbert:
My current favourite is his "Denial", a meditation on those times when God's face is like flint and hidden from us. I love the comparison Herbert makes in the poem: both mind and verse are disconsolate until God's intervention in the final stanza. There's therefore a lovely rhyming scheme which is consistently frustrated up until the final couplet, when God "mends my rime". Partly, however, I find Herbert's poem describes exactly how I currently feel in my walk with God. I'm not sure whether this is as a result of over work, or a symptom of something more serious, with the following becoming something of a prayer for me. Hopefully the cloud will break in the desert soon. Anyway, on to Herbert:
| 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: My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow, Did fly asunder: Each took his way; some would to pleasures go, Some to the wars and thunder Of alarms. As good go any where, they say, As to benumb Both knees and heart, in Crying night and day, Come, come, my God, O come, But no Hearing. 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 nipped blossom, hung Discontented. O cheer and tune my heartless breast, Defer no time; That so thy favors granting my request, They and my mind may chime, And mend my rime. |
