The Pulley
When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by,
Let us, said He, pour on him all we can.
Let the world's riches, which dispersed 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.
In Scotland the pulley was a long clothes drying frame that once full was pulled above head height in the scullery. That, at least was my experience as a child. Herbert, however, would have in mind any wheel with a rope attached which was used to lift heavy objects by pulling down on the other side. You pulled on the pulley to pull something heavy upwards. The title already suggests that God's human creature was going to be hard work!
"When God first made man…" Immediately we are in Genesis, looking over God's shoulder as he forms and fashions human beings. We are also told of what's going on in the mind of God. And what's going on is the inner discussion of the Godhead about how to maximise blessings for humanity.Like the later promise of Malachi, (3.10) God will open the windows (glasse) of heaven and pour out such blessings as the human heart won't contain them. The entire beneficence of creation concentrated on human flourishing and joy.
The second stanza shows God hesitating, itself a theological novelty. All that is needed for human flourishing, the highest ideal of physical, social and moral life are poured out, until God had second thoughts. With all this joy, pleasure, fulfilment, and contentment, what motive would be left for human creatures to give God a second thought.
If God bestows the final gift of rest then "he would adore my gifts instead of me." Herbert is one of the finest expositors of love as the union of God and his human creatures. He understands exactly the tensions that are set up by passionate and longing love. The lover loves the beloved because only in that love can they find personal fulfilment. But pushed too far, the joy of satisfaction can become an end in itself, and we love the other not for themselves but for what they can give us.
Love stays alive and goes on growing only when there is a sense of incompleteness, more to learn of each other, desires never permanently fulfilled, questions that are never fully answered about the mystery and the unexplored inner world of this other person, that which always surprises us, and all of this contracted into the span of a human heart that is made for restlessness, discontent and longing. Perfection of human life and love would be what P T Forsyth once called "a finished futility." It is aspiration, longing, desire, discontent, that keeps us restless.
"Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee." (Augustine, Confessions.) Surely Herbert knew those words, because the last stanza is the same argument in poetic form and with God as the speaker. "Repining restlessness" is precisely unfulfilled longing, conscious incompleteness, desire satisfied but never permanently. The search is long and tiring, fulfilling but frustratingly temporary, like those hill climbs when having reached what we think is the summit, we find there's still a ways to go. So we are pulled onwards, and upwards.
No surprise this is one of Herbert's best known poems. God's love is wise, knowing that love must always be a mutual longing, a seeking and finding, an encounter of two freely given hearts that will always be precarious, requiring to be worked at, and dependent not only on mutual attraction but on an endless restlessness that pulls the one to the other.
Of course, Herbert knew full well that human restlessness is the inevitable pull of the finite towards infinitude, of the unfulfilled towards the One in whom we live and move and have our being, and in whom, finally, we will rest.
(Photo by my friend Graeme Clark)
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