Mattens
I cannot ope mine eyes,
But thou art ready there to catch
My morning-soul and sacrifice:
Then we must needs for that day make a match.
My God, what is a heart?
Silver, or gold, or precious stone,
Or starre, or rainbow, or a part
Of all these things, or all of them in one?
My God, what is a heart,
That thou shouldst it so eye, and wooe,
Powring upon it all thy art,
As if that Thou hadst nothing els to do?
Indeed, man's whole estate
Amounts (and richly) to serve thee:
He did not heav'n and earth create,
Yet studies them, not him by whom they be.
Teach me thy love to know;
That this new light, which now I see,
May both the work and workman show:
Then by a sunne-beam I will climbe to thee.
Nothing worse than finding out we have slept in, again. God is always up before us, and we spend the day playing catch up with our prayers. This is Herbert in playful mood, lighthearted about an inevitable reality. There are few better word pictures of prevenient grace discovering God has is there before us, before we wake to the fact that God awaits our sacrifice of praise.
Stanzas 2 asks a question that echoes the wondering awe of Psalm 8, "What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him." What is a heart, a human heart, that God should go to all the trouble of loving and treasuring it? The mysterious value of each human heart is woven out of a catena of images that are precious, beautiful, stellar and like the rainbow, laden with promise.
Stanza 3 asks the same question because there is still no answer. And the poet switches from the conundrum of what a human heart is, to the infinitely greater mystery of why God, with patient love and invitation should use the full range of divine imagination and skilled negotiation to win allegiance and love. 'Powring' is the old spelling of pouring, both pronounced the same, and so creating a sense of extravagant gift and powerful persuasion. Then the informal last line, as if God had nothing better to do.
Herbert is psychologically astute in his analysis of why and how the human heart is such hard work for the Creator. Everything that makes a human life good is gift; the creation is rich in resources and opportunities, almost as if it were custom made for human flourishing. Indeed the abundance of nature is so fascinating and rewarding, so fertile and fruitful, that human beings quickly ignore the Creator and concentrate exclusively on the product.
Herbert lived at a time when Divine Providence was slowly being erased from explanations for the world's existence and explanatory models of how the universe works. This is part of his push back. His brother Edward Herbert of Cherbury was a celebrated Deist, and had little conscience about being one of those who "studies them [heav'n and earth], not him by whom they be."
The last stanza as often in Herbert, becomes direct petition to God for an inner transformation that, changing him, will change the way he lives in and views the world. Science needn't dispense with God; scientific discovery is also God's gift, wondering curiosity is the intellectual form of devotion, not its negation.
Mattens is the first prayer of the day. It is praise and thanksgiving for the gift of another day's potential, opportunity and responsibility. It will also be a day when we will learn, there will be new light, but with new knowledge comes both responsibility to use it well, and to acknowledge from whom it comes, and whose universe we are studying, living in and enjoying.
And then that last line. The pun on 'sunne' and 'Son', and the image of a sunbeam that joins heaven and earth; what a rich image for Herbert's first readers. Think Jacob's ladder joining heaven to earth; think of Christ the light of the world; think of how Christ climbed Calvary carrying a beam; the new light that dawned on that first resurrection morning, the first Mattens of the new creation; and think then of your own deepest aspirations of soul, expressed so beautifully, "Teach me thy love to know…/ Then by a sunne-beam I will climbe to thee."
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