'The Sacrifice' is Herbert's longest poem. (See below at the end of this post for a link to the full text of the poem)
The Sacrifice is the only poem in The Temple in which Christ is the speaker. The reader or hearer is directly addressed by Christ, who tells his story as the unfolding drama of redemption from the perspective of the Crucified.
The utter self-giving that is the sacrifice of the cross is narrated, described and impressed on the reader, by a relentless tone of grief internalised in the heart of the Saviour whose heartbeat thuds in the rhythms of sixty three stanzas in iambic pentameter. The effect is cumulative, " with five short-longs or light-heavies to every line. This Latin metre gives his monologue a solemn and insistent monotony like a tolling bell, rounded off by the three iambics of the refrain." (Drury, 8)
The voice of Christ is profoundly ironic throughout. The unthinkable has to be thought, the impossible is taking place, the one who is human suffers beyond the scale of human experience and the one who is divine dies. The insistent use of the first person singular is inescapable; the refrain reminds the reader that unspeakable anguish, inconsolable sorrow, infinite suffering and eternal loss are fully owned by the God who in Christ is reconciling the world to himself.
"Was ever grief like mine?" is a rhetorical question intended to jolt the reader into awareness. This grief and suffering has no legal, moral or judicial justification. It is planned and inflicted by human structures, institutions and spiritual wickedness in high places as all the political, religious and legal powers are unleashed. The Passion of Jesus is the ultimate human rebellion against God, the crucifying of love, the rejection of the hands of reconciliation by nailing them down, once and for all.
Only twice in sixty three verses does that refrain change,"Was ever grief like mine?" Throughout it expects the answer No. When it comes to the cry of dereliction in stanza 54, the change brings the poem to a stuttering failure of rhythm, as the whole universe faces the existential threat of God's all but unbearable anguish at human sin, and God suffers God-forsakenness as "Being begins to die":
But, O my God, my God! why leav’st thou me,
The sonne, in whom thou dost delight to be?
My God, my God ——
Never was grief like mine.
The poem falters, and only picks up again when Christ answers his own question, "Never was grief like mine." The answer to the question asked throughout the poem, is answered by the one who has relentlessly asked it, and the answer is torn from a soul tormented beyond human comprehension, and, perhaps, beyond even divine articulation.
The only other time the refrain is changed is the last verse. The long winding road is almost ended; from Gethsemane to Caiaphas, from Pilate to the via dolorosa, from the Cyrenian's help to the soldiers' nails and dice and sour wine, from crucifixion to abandonment and anguished speech. And now the final word:
But now I die; now all is finished.
My wo, mans weal: and now I bow my head.
Onely let others say, when I am dead,
Never was grief like mine.
Herbert's long poem is like a slowly unfolding commentary on the stations of the cross. I have long thought that on Good Friday, it could be performed in its entirety, read in the tones of lamentation. (See below for a link to the full text of the poem).Of course, the refrain comes from Lamentations 1.12: "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger."
Herbert echoes the heartbroken sense of futility, wasted suffering, human desolation and bewildered anguish of those sitting in Jerusalem devastated, stripped of life, disfigured beyond recognition. And the tragedy is deepened beyond belief by the fact that there are those who pass by unmoved, who live their own lives as if all this had not happened, or who are too busy with their own priorities to even notice the Crucified God.
If you take the time to read Herbert's version of the Passion, put into the mouth of the suffering Christ, you will begin to feel the cumulative power of the question asked of every bystander, and which stands as the opening of this great poem:
Oh all ye, who passe by, whose eyes and minde
To worldly things are sharp, but to me blinde;
To me, who took eyes that I might you finde:
Was ever grief like mine?
(The image is a studio study of one of the Stations of the Cross, by my friend, Alexander Stoddart. This and two others in my study, form a triptych of the Crucifixion.)
(You can find the full text of The Sacrifice here)
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