Author: admin

The Wreath

A wreathèd garland of deservèd praise,
Of praise deservèd, unto Thee I give,
I give to Thee, who knowest all my ways,
My crooked winding ways, wherein I live,—
Wherein I die, not live ; for life is straight,
Straight as a line, and ever tends to Thee,
To Thee, who art more far above deceit,
Than deceit seems above simplicity.
Give me simplicity, that I may live,
So live and like, that I may know Thy ways,
Know them and practise them: then shall I give
For this poor wreath, give Thee a crown of praise.

This is exactly the kind of poem that got Metaphysical Poets a bad name, unfairly I think. The complaint is usually about a poem that is too clever by half, weaving words through repetition, repeating the words at the end of a line almost exactly as the start of the next line. For example "deserved praise" becomes "of praise deserved", and while the repetition of words varies, the continuity of ideas is sustained. Just as flowers, leaves and greenery are woven around each other into a continuous, never ending circle.

But Herbert knows what he is doing. He is using a conceit to weave into the poem the very idea that the words describe. He starts with "a wreathed garland", and ends with a "crown of praise", and between these two points where the circle joins in completion, is the circle of life, all his ways, his crooked winding ways. And, of course, Herbert knows that while his ways are crooked, life itself is a straight temporal line, that one way or another will lead to God.

The contrasts of deceit and simplicity, crooked and straight, death and life, are set within a poem that has its own impetus, given extra momentum by the strong petition, "Give me simplicity".

What makes Herbert such a theologically subtle poet is his self-awareness, first of his own crooked heart, and second of his heart's best aspirations; his heart is at worst devious and at best devout. He wants his life to bring praise to God, despite the failures in the live performance that is his life. To know and practice God's ways, is to make faith active, to love in word and deed, to believe in such a way that what is believed is performed, enacted, embodied.

Helen Wilcox sums this poem up: "In the opposition between 'poor wreath' and 'crown', three main contrasts are at work: a poem versus a lived and practised life, the complexity of a 'winding wreath' versus the simplicity of a circular crown, and imperfect earthly achievement versus the perfection of heaven." 

The entire collection of Herbert's poems tend in the direction of that last line. "Then shall I give
For this poor wreath, give Thee a crown of praise". Christian experience, in all its ambiguity, vacillation and struggle, is a wreathed garland, our ways are often crooked and winding. But the heart is set in the right direction, and the underlying beat of the heart, is the longing to know and practise the ways of God, and at the end, to see the wreathed garland of an incomplete life, transformed into the perfect circular crown of praise.   

Praise II

King of glory, King of peace,
I will love Thee;
and that love may never cease,
I will move Thee.
Thou hast granted my request,
Thou hast heard me;
Thou didst note my working breast,
Thou hast spared me.

Wherefore with my utmost art
I will sing Thee,
and the cream of all my heart
I will bring Thee.
Though my sins against me cried,
Thou didst clear me;
and alone, when they replied,
Thou didst hear me.

Sev'n whole days, not one in sev'n,
I will praise Thee;
in my heart, though not in heav'n,
I can raise Thee.
Small it is, in this poor sort
to enroll Thee:
e'en eternity's too short
to extol Thee.

Another of Herbert's poems slightly adapted for congregational hymn singing. T S Eliot praised Praise II for its 'masterly simplicity' and one of Herbert's best interpreters calls it a tour de force in imitation of biblical psalms. It's all of that, and more.

The combination of glory and peace are titles of divine tension. Great power and great patience, visible majesty and surprising meekness, dazzling splendour and accommodating condescension, coalesce in the way God relates to human beings.

In Herbert's simple verses, the God who dwells in unapproachable light is being approached by someone whose praise is not fit for purpose, but it's all he has, and all he has he gives, his "utmost art." In these verses God is being approached in a 7/4 metre, like seven steps forward, four back, a rhythm of boldness followed by hesitation.

Praise and love energise each other in this and other Herbert poems. Herbert promises "I will love thee". But love is fulfilled when reciprocated in a mutual exchange of affection, a virtuous circle of loving and being loved. 

Praise is cheap if it remains verbal. However clever the verse, it's the heart that matters, and Herbert uses verse as the vehicle of love, the giving of his very best, the cream of the milk. Singing is one thing; bringing the heart is what makes the words live.

As usual, and this is not a criticism, it is a liturgical and spiritual necessity, Herbert draws near to the King of Glory with trepidation because he can think of all kinds of reasons (sins) why he shouldn't dare. Equally we are unsurprised that God forgives, and what's more, silences the sins' arguments by ignoring them and listening instead to the sincere praise of Herbert's heart.

So a hymn. Not to be sung only on Sundays, but seven days a week. The rhythm of time in weeks, is set against the last two lines. Herbert's utmost art, and the cream of his heart every day, are not enough, and likewise no amount of skill and energy do justice to the King of Glory and of Peace; 

ev'n eternitie is too short

                     to extol thee.

And in the penultimate line Herbert demonstrates the inadequacy of his utmost art by the deliberate faux pas of an eight metre line in a poem that has been 7/4 all the way through. What breaks the rhythm of verse, highlights the limits of eternity itself as sufficient to express fully the fullness of God's love. The entire purpose of the poem is "that love may never cease".

One critic comments, this is "a poem about itself; Herbert praises God while discussing his ability to do so." I think that is true, with one slight correction. What Herbert discusses with God is his inability to praise God adequately on while on earth and with human limitations. Then he gives up entirely, even eternity is too short! So we do what we can. We praise God with our best, rejoicing that God is beyond all our praising. After all God is God; not a problem to be solved but one who invites love and relationship, the I-Thou that is the refrain throughout in the odd numbered lines.

(The image is a photo of a tapestry of a stained glass window, worked freehand. The window is based on a Cezanne painting, worked by Roger Fry and titled Harvester.)  

This from Izaak Walton's life of George Herbert. It is quaint, rose tinted, and written by one of Herbert's least critical fans. But as an apocryphal story of what true Christian helpfulness is, it has its own way of pointing us in the right direction in helping those around us with consideration, compassion and companionship. Read it slowly; be patient with 17th Century leisurely tale-telling; and take time to ask what such a story asks of us during the current crisis we all face. 

In another walk to Salisbury, he saw a poor man with a poorer horse, that was fallen under his load: they were both in distress, and needed present help; which Mr. Herbert perceiving, put off his canonical coat, and helped the poor man to unload, and after to load, his horse. The poor man blessed him for it, and he blessed the poor man; and was so like the Good Samaritan, that he gave him money to refresh both himself and his horse; and told him, "That if he loved himself he should be merciful to his beast."

Thus he left the poor man; and at his coming to his musical friends at Salisbury, they began to wonder that Mr. George Herbert, which used to be so trim and clean, came into that company so soiled and discomposed:but he told them the occasion. And when one of the company told him, "He had disparaged himself by so dirty an employment," his answer was, "That the thought of what he had done would prove music to him at midnight; and that the omission of it would have upbraided and made discord in his conscience, whensoever he should pass by that place: for if I be bound to pray for all that be in distress, I am sure that I am bound, so far as it is in my power, to practice what I pray for. And though I do not wish for the like occasion every day, yet let me tell you, I would not willingly pass one day of my life without comforting a sad soul, or shewing mercy; and I praise God for this occasion. And now let’s tune our instruments." 

Unkindnesse

Lord, make me coy and tender to offend:

In friendship, first I think, if that agree,

                                  Which I intend,

               Unto my friends intent and end.

I would not use a friend, as I use Thee.

If any touch my friend, or his good name;

It is my honour and my love to free

                                  His blasted fame

                From the least spot or thought of blame.

I could not use a friend, as I use Thee.

My friend may spit upon my curious floore:

Would he have gold? I lend it instantly;

                               But let the poore,

              And thou within them starve at doore.

I cannot use a friend, as I use Thee.

When that my friend pretendeth to a place,

I quit my interest, and leave it free:

                                    But when thy grace

                   Sues for my heart, I thee displace,

Nor would I use a friend, as I use Thee.

Yet can a friend what thou hast done fulfill?

O write in brasse, My God upon a tree

                                    His bloud did spill

                  Onely to purchase my good-will:

Yet use I not my foes, as I use thee.

                      …………………………

None of us like being used. That happens when someone uses us as a means to an end; that is, as a means, not an end. Respect for persons is basic in moral philosophy, teaching that the good person treats others as an end in themselves. A person is to be valued for who they are, not because of their usefulness. Utilitarianism in this negative sense treats the other person as a resource, to be valued in proportion to the contribution they make to my plans, ambitions, interests.

Herbert recognises the moral wrongness of using someone. It is the opposite of love; it is relational utilitarianism. It shows itself in ingratitude for the countless gestures of friendship and affection that have been given on the understanding that friendship is reciprocal, an exchange of goods and goodwill, mutually expensive and mutually beneficial. 

To all his other close friends Herbert shows that mutuality of respect, affection and generosity. But to the one he calls Lord, not so. Considerate, deferential, generous and always making allowances for all his other friends, even for rudeness like spitting on the floor, Herbert works hard at his friendships. Except this one. 

Then, as often in his poems, Herbert uses a favourite pivot word in the last stanza. Yet. Despite the neglect, ingratitude, self-interest and unkindness Herbert has shown, the truth is even at his very best as a friend he can neither match nor repay what the Lord has done for him, as his friend. 

He wants it engraved on brass, a process that requires a steel stylus with a diamond tip.

                            My God upon a tree

                                    His bloud did spill

                  Onely to purchase my good-will.

With predictable penitence, Herbert looks to the cross and Christ's passion, and the price his friend paid for no other purpose than to win Herbert's heart and devotion and faithfulness, as a friend. He treats his enemies more generously than his Lord and friend. This last stanza recalls other lines from another poet: "but O my Friend, my Friend indeed / who at my need his life did spend."

Once again Herbert compels his reader to overhear his sorrow at the spiritual deficit he has built up. And perhaps echoing in the background, Jesus' words convict him and push him towards a change of mind: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." 

1. Elixir is that which is transformed by the philosopher's stone, turning to gold whatever it touches. In the poem, the motive for every action, "for Thy sake"
2. "Nothing is little in God's service: if it once have the honour of that Name it grows great instantly." (Herbert, The Country Parson).
3. Drudgery divine is a precise definition of those disciplines and habits that form us and keep us who we are; not what we do but why, and for whom we do it.

George Herbert's poems are laced with Bible texts. Sometimes directly quoted phrases make obvious connections; in some poems allusions and echoes of biblical narrative create a theological structure for an entire poem; and, as in "Clasping of Hands' one phrase is traceable to several biblical verses.

It's interesting to read these biblical echoes before reading the poem.

"My beloved is mine, and I am his." Song of Songs 2.16.

"And all mine are thine, and thine are mine." John 17.10

"I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me…" Galatians 2.20

"Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it…" I Corinthians 12.27

Clasping of Hands

Lord, thou art mine, and I am thine,

If mine I am: and thine much more,

Then I or ought, or can be mine.

Yet to be thine, doth me restore;

So that again I now am mine,

And with advantage mine the more:

Since this being mine, brings with it thine,

And thou with me dost thee restore.

          If I without thee would be mine,

          I neither should be mine nor thine.

Lord, I am thine, and thou art mine:

So mine thou art, that something more

I may presume thee mine, then thine.

For thou didst suffer to restore

Not thee, but me, and to be mine:

And with advantage mine the more,

Since thou in death wast none of thine,

Yet then as mine didst me restore.

          O be mine still! still make me thine!

          Or rather make no Thine and Mine!

                                  ……………………..

Now if the title was omitted you would never guess this is a poem about clasping hands. There is no mention of hands in the poem, and not even clear reference to handshakes, hands clasped in prayer, or even lovers walking together holding hands. 

The biblical references suggest something much deeper than a handshake of friendship. In fact the most obvious echoes of "mine and thine" speak of the embrace of lovers in the Song of Songs, and the eternal mystery of the Trinity as mutual self-giving love. 

This is Herbert in conversation with God, trying to describe God's eternal love affair with each Christian soul. Somehow he manages to turn an extended conundrum on the greatest mystery of the Faith into a theological word-maze that comes to a brilliant resolution in the last two lines.

O be mine still! still make me thine!

Or rather make no Thine and Mine!

Take time to read the last words of each line in the first stanza – now compare them with the last words in the second stanza. The possessive pronouns are reversed in the second stanza. It is a brilliant example of clarifying by confusion! This is metaphysical poetry at its most fascinating and frustrating, a kind of theological sudoku using words instead of numbers. This is the I-Thou relationship as experienced in the heart; mine and thine as mutual possession through self-giving, without loss of identity. How does that work? That's Herbert's question.

One further thought. Herbert uses the word restore as a conceptual hinge twice in each verse. In the first use, it describes his own salvation; in the second, it describes how his own salvation completes Christ's work of salvation in him.

In the second stanza restore is shorthand for Christ's Passion which restores Herbert to himself, his redeemed self, at which point there is neither thine nor mine, but a union of being in Christ.

The cross makes no sense without reference to its efficacy in restoring God's work in a new creation; that work is personally appropriated by the clasping of hands, remember the title? 

The clasping of hands is the seal of agreement, with overtones of the New Covenant between God and humanity. "In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself…" The cross as God's handshake with the world, friendship restored. 

And of course, Herbert knew perfectly well that clasping of hands is the symbol of prayer, long before it became a wee emoji! So, this Lent, clasp the hands and take the hand of God. 

Temper (1)

That first stanza. It has two exclamation marks, no question marks. But the entire poem is an agitated rhythm of self-questioning.

If only I could always be my best self, complains the poet. Herbert is at it again, giving himself a hard time. Praise is spasmodic because the emotion and feeling of gratitude comes and goes. If only he could be consistent, constant, dependable, his praise would be predictable, and his relationship with God as durable as a signature etched in steel. If only. Two words of a heart wounded by regret.

The rest of the poem is spent wishing it were otherwise. The second stanza stumbles and stutters over the word 'Sometimes. Not never, not always, but sometimes, that middle of the road word that makes no unbreakable promises, but does what it can. For Herbert, it's never enough to do quite well; anything short of excellence verging on perfection exposes what he truly is, 'a crumb of dust.'

That word 'sometimes'; at the risk of committing culpable incongruity, it recalls a song I heard countless times when our son was a certain age, and his music invaded the entire house space. 'Sometimes' by the rock band James is a bleak and defiant anthem against a world of elemental power, danger, loss of meaning, reduced significance and diminishing hope. At the core of the song the refrain,

Sometimes, when I look deep in your eyes I swear I can see your soul,
Sometimes, when I look deep in your eyes I swear I can see your soul.

This 90's song is a universe removed from Herbert's Seventeenth Century metaphysical poem. But those lines speak of a generation's urgent search for reality, authenticity, significant identity, self-knowing, looking for whatever it is that used to be called the soul. Herbert's more restrained discontent and existential dissatisfaction, given the religious intensity of his age, has the same sense of searching and being searched, of God looking deep inside and seeing the soul, and the human recoil from such a searching, searing stare.

I told you it was incongruous, James from Manchester, and Herbert from Bemerton. There's the best part of four centuries between them, but that sense of searching and being searched remains as one of the most disconcerting of all human anxieties. 

Herbert finishes the poem with a resolution, an affirmation of faith that is part resignation to the divine will, part surrender of his own will, whether he is angel, dust or angel's dust, he is in God's hands:

A facsimile of Herbert's Antiphon (1).

I remember singing this Antiphon in the 1980's, at an Evening Praise Service in the Thomas Coats Memorial Church in Paisley. I was minister there from 1980-84.

What made it memorable was a coincidence of sensory experiences of sight and sound. The church had a highly trained choir and one of the finest organists around, temperamental and brilliant. We were gathered in the choir stalls because it was a small gathering. The sun was setting and shining in mellowed light tinged with rose and cream, which streamed through the pale tinted glass in rays that fell across the mosaic floor of the chancel. The result was breathtakingly beautiful.

As we began to sing, the voices of the congregation were supported and supplemented by a full choral range, controlled and enlarged by a William Hill four manual organ, played with expert restraint, and followed by a brief moment of pure silence. It was a unique episode of worship as gift, and of praise as the joining of heaven and earth in the heart. 

The Antiphon is defined as: "a composition in prose or verse, consisting of verses or passages sung alternately by two choirs in worship." That's what we did that August evening. Of course what made the entire experience so memorable that it can be recalled with such detail was the combination of the context, and the content. Because this is one of Herbert's more straightforwardly simple poems about the heart's responsiveness to God; it is one of the moments of pure praise uncomplicated by Herbert's spiritual sensitivities about guilt and unworthiness. 

If Lent is about self-sacrifice, this poem of Herbert's requires of us a different kind of self giving. No less appropriate for Lent.  Not the eyes cast down of penitence, but the face uplifted in praise, the conjoining of heaven and earth in our prayers, and the fusion in praise of the individual heart and the gathered community. But while we must shout our praise together in church, it is the individual heart that carries on the music when the hymn ends, and in the quiet continuum of an obedient life.

There is a version of the Antiphon over here. And the photo below was taken by Charlee Maasz, and shows Coats Memorial with light streaming across the chancel. 

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."  

A photo of the poem Altar from one of my Victorian editions. I wonder if children ever coloured in these delicate drawings?

THE ALTAR

A  broken   A L T A R,  Lord,  thy  servant  reares,
Made  of  a  heart,  and  cemented  with   teares:
Whose  parts  are as  thy  hand did frame;
No workman's tool hath touch’d the same.
A    H E A R T     alone
Is    such    a     stone,
As      nothing      but
Thy  pow’r doth  cut.
Wherefore each part
Of   my   hard   heart
Meets  in  this  frame,
To  praise thy  Name;
That,   if   I   chance   to   hold   my   peace,
These stones to praise thee may not cease.
O  let  thy   blessed   S A C  R  I  F  I C E   be  mine,
And    sanctifie   this   A  L  T  A  R   to   be   thine.