This poem by George Herbert is the best poem I know for Holy Saturday. The rich use of the stone / rock image is fully exploited in biblical image and allusion. In Helen Wilcox's magisterial edition of The English Poems of George Herbert she offers a running commentary on all of the poems in the form of Notes and review of Modern Criticism. No point in duplicating that here. If you love the poetry of George Herbert then buy the paperback from Amazon for around £25 – 700 plus pages of literary illumination!
“SEPULCHER” – by George Herbert
Oh blessed body! Whither art thou thrown?
No lodging for thee, but a cold hard stone?
So many hearts on earth, and yet not one
Receive thee?
Sure there is room within our hearts good store;
For they can lodge transgressions by the score:
Thousands of toys dwell there, yet out of door
They leave thee.
But that which shows them large, shows them unfit.
Whatever sin did this pure rock commit,
Which holds thee now? Who hath indicted it
Of murder?
Where our hard hearts have took up stones to brain thee,
And missing this, most falsely did arraign thee;
Only these stones in quiet entertain thee,
And order.
And as of old, the law by heav’nly art,
Was writ in stone; so thou, which also art
The letter of the word, find’st no fit heart
To hold thee.
Yet do we still persist as we began,
And so should perish, but that nothing can,
Though it be cold, hard, foul, from loving man
Withhold thee.
Leave a Reply