Poems by George Herbert: undated edition, published by "The Gresham Publishing Company", 34 Southampton Street, Strand, London; with an Introduction by William, Archbishop of Armagh, Lord Primate of Ireland [William Alexander, Archbishop 1893-1911]
[Introduction]
George Herbert, one of the truest saints of the Church of England, was born on the 3rd of April, 1593. Of the exact day of his death there is some doubt. It seems, however, on the whole, most probable that he passed away on the last day of February or the first of March, 1633. His life and character has been delineated by Izaak Walton, with a tenderness and quiet beauty which have made the book one of the immortal classics of the English Church. Any writer upon the "Temple" may be quite satisfied to assume a general knowledge of its author by all who are likely to read his commentary.
In the case of a poet who has published a good deal of prose, and whose productions in both have the precious stamp of individuality, we have the key to a flower garden which admits us also to the whole domain of a writer's mind. Thus Herbert's "Country Parson" affords us many indications of the same tone of intellect as that which produced the "Temple". The voice of the "verser" (to use Herbert's favourite word) is at once recognized as the voice of the essayist. For all his holiness our poet in this case is a practical psychologist who sees into the hearts of men with the keenest insight. Though young in years, the court and university have taught him their lessons. On the day of his induction to Bemerton, prostrate before the altar, he sees himself in spirit addressing lessons to the various classes of men whom he thoroughly knows. The "Church Porch" is a farewell to the world. In its lengthened stanzas he has a direct word, sometimes burning, sometimes sarcastic, for the slave of lust or wine; for the false and profane; for the idle who waste hours "dressing, mistressing, and complimenting"; for magistrates; for impoverished people who "lessen still their state, as the days lessen, and their life with it"; for the over-talkative ("A civil guest will no more talk all, than eat all the feast"); for all in short who go to church as to their demeanour and feelings there, for "dressing the soul at night and morning". Sometimes he startles us by the large language of one who has lived in an atmosphere electric with the presence of Shakespeare. The soldier has the honour of eliciting a few lines not unworthy of an influence so majestic:
- "If soldier,
- Chase brave employments with a naked sword
- Throughout the world; fool not, for all may have,
- If they dare try, a glorious life or grave". (Note *)
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Sometimes, again, the image is as expressive and inevitable as it is coarse. Thus, he says to the incessant and talkative denouncer:
- "Make not thy sport abuses: for the fly
- That feeds on dung, is colourèd thereby".
When the courtier and accomplished public orator turns his attention to a parson's life among uneducated country folk he reads them with the same perspicuous gaze; for instance, "because country people live hardly and therefore as feeling their own sweat, and consequently knowing the price of money, are offended much with any, who by hard usage increase their travel, the country parson is very circumspect in avoiding all covetousness, neither being greedy to get nor niggardly to keep, nor troubled to lose any worldly wealth". He well knows that his country hearers are wanting in rational earnestness and sustained perseverance, and are only touched by the sermon for a moment. "They are thick and heavy and hard to raise to a point of zeal and fervency, and need a mountain of fire to kindle them; but stories and sayings they will well remember." Sometimes he has a sharp sentence. For instance, for a common trick among the Puritannical preachers of the age: "Some observations", he says, "drawn out of the whole text as it lies entire and unbroken in the Scripture itself I think natural and sweet and grave. Whereas the other way of crumbling a text into small parts hath neither in it sweetness, nor gravity, nor variety, since the words apart are not Scripture but a dictionary, and may be considered alike in all the Scripture." But for broken and contrite hearts he has some of the most consolatory words which were ever uttered by mortal lips. I have only space to refer to the beautiful chapter which ends with the words: "All may certainly conclude that God loves them, till either they despise that love, or despair of His mercy; not any sin else but is within His love, but the despising of His love must needs be without it. The thrusting away of His arm only makes us not embraced." (Note*) A careful study of "The Country Parson" will form a most useful preparation for a real study of "The Temple".
It is useless to disguise the fact that the admiration and even the patience of some modern readers of "The Temple" may be somewhat severely taxed. If we turn to the structure of the verse, the occasional magnificence or sweetness of the lines, printed sometimes so as to form altars or wings, scarcely redeems whole poems from contempt. Identical rhymes try the ear attuned to poetical music again and again. Metaphors of almost inconceivable meanness or unpleasant repugnance are too often found. Thus in the "Banquet":
- "Oh what sweetnesse from the bowl
- Fills my soul,
- Such as is, and makes divine!
- Is some starre (fled from the sphere)
- Melted there,
- As we sugar melt in wine".
Occasionally, our poet carries a beautiful image into details of almost audacious littleness. For instance:
- "Listen, sweet dove! unto my song,
- And spread thy golden wings in me.
- Hatching my tender heart so long
- Till it get wing".
Herbert is in a special sense the poet of the rose among flowers. The rose is the recognizance of his genius. In one of his poems the words
- "What is fairer than a rose,
- What is sweeter?"
make us anticipate something of a piece with that strain of poetic enchantment which begins:
- "Sweet day, so calm, so cool, so bright,
- Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave".
But the strangely and very unpleasantly "medical" conclusion almost makes one angry.
Our great English sacred poet, John Keble, restrains his admiration for Herbert within bounds somewhat surprisingly narrow. There is nothing of rapture in the solitary mention of Herbert in his once famous "Praelections". One single line of Herbert's is said, upon the best authority, to have been a great favourite with the poet-priest of Hursley:
"Love is a present for a mighty king".
Once, and once only, Keble, who culls ideas and expressions far and wide, from Homer and Aeschylus, from Gray and Scott, even from Burns and Byron, has a direct echo of Herbert. (Note*) The truth seems to be that Keble was in one respect separated from Herbert, whose way of dealing with the Holy Communion was, we may be sure, repugnant to the great professor of poetry. The sharp thrusts - "concerned bread not me", "died to abolish sin not wheat" - must have been unpalatable to him. Herbert (see especially "The Church Militant") chalked up "no Popery" in letters to big for Keble's refined tenderness.
So far this "foreword" has been a reluctant sacrifice to truth, but George Herbert's real fame and influence have been lessened, generation after generation, by often indiscriminate praise. The young frequently take up "The Temple"; probably the first pieces that meet their eyes are impaired in their judgment by some of the blemishes to which reference has been made; but there remain two claims which we unhesitatingly make for it.
1. "The Temple" contains twelve or thirteen pieces, some of which are almost perfect in their way, and all of which will thoroughly requite "studious regard with opportune delight". I note them down for the reader's use:
- "Sin."
- "Prayer."
- "The Windows."
- "Constancy."
- "Sunday."
- "To all Angels and Saints."
- "Virtue."
- "Life."
- "The British Church." (A wonderful, almost
- prophetic concentration of the whole
- genius and history of Anglican theology.)
- "Business."
- "The Call."
- "Aaron."
Herbert's verse, no less than Keble's has been accused by many of being what Archbishop Whately called the "Christian Year", "my Sunday puzzle", but Sir John Coleridge's saying will always be found true by those who will give themselves a little time to think - "If Herbert's words are sometimes hard, you may at least be sure that they always have a meaning".
2. Herbert has won unstinted praise from all classes of men whom a sacred poet would most wish to please. One of these classes consists of the men whom to charm is immortality - poets themselves. Poets, of extra-ordinary poetic feeling, have not only revelled in Herbert's work, but found in it the fountain of their own inspiration. So was it with Vaughan, Crashaw, Herrick. Let us, however, see what Mr Courthope writes of Vaughan: "With less power of metaphysical thought than Herbert, Vaughan had a finer sense of natural beauty, which he was by no means content to confine within church walls. The thoughts that were stimulated in Herbert by the font, the altar, the light that streamed through the coloured glass . . . were aroused in Vaughan by the contemplation of rocks, woods, rivers, and solitudes." I respectfully regret to find this somewhat modern, and I think unjust, source of depreciation, in one of the finest and subtlest or Mr Courthope's admirable criticisms. Think of passages taken almost at random: --
- "I got me flowers to straw thy way,
- I got me boughs off many a tree;
- But thou wast up by break of day,
- And brought'st thy sweets along with thee."
- "No ruffling wind
- Can blow away, or glittering look it blind."
- "Time did beckon to the flowers,
- I took Time's gentle admonition,
- Who did so sweetly death's sad taste convey."
- "Grief melts away
- Like snow in May,
- As if there were no such cold thing."
- "Who would have thought my shrivelled heart
- Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
- Quite underground; as flowers depart
- To see their mother-root, when they have blown."
- "And now in age I live again,
- After so many deaths I live and write,
- I once more smell the dew and rain."
- "Hark how the birds do sing,
- And woods do ring.
- All creatures have their joy and man hath his."
- "Not that he may not here
- Taste of the cheer;
- But as birds drink and straight lift up the head,
- So he must think
- Of better drink
- He may attain to after he is dead."
These are not the songs of a poet whose muse never truly visits him except inside a church!
That must be a delightful acknowledgement which comes to a heavenly poet like Herbert from other singers whose genius has received a sacred regeneration under his influence. Such acknowledgements were made by Vaughan and Herrick, with evident sincerity, to the author of "The Temple", as to a dear friend, "whose holy ever-living lines had done them much good". Yet, after all, a tribute more precious, if it could be made known to the psalmists of successive ages, would be the assurance that the thoughts which they had invested with the music of their utterance had soothed desponding souls, or raised mortal spirits to immortal hope. If Cowper -- in spite of a something in Herbert which he thought "Gothic and uncouth" -- never found his spiritual despondency so much alleviated as when he was reading "The Temple", so may it be with others. If the author of the "Saints' Rest" spoke with truth when he said that "heart-work and heaven-work make up Herbert's book", a republication of that book may bring many blessings in an age when hearts are sad and heaven looks dim and distant.
WILLIAM ARMAGH
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(The Rejoice & Sing Enchiridion:edited by David Goodall; last amended 16/6/02)