The Pulley (For All Clergy During Holy Week)

     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 richest, which dispersed lie,
     Contract into a span.’

     So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flow’d, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all his treasure
     Rest at 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.’

--George Herbert (1593-1633), Welsh-born Anglican priest, parson, preacher, and poet.

Image: Jesus Prays in Gethsemane, David Popiashvili, Georgian artist based in Tbilisi.

Sepulchre

Oh blessed body! Whither art thou thrown?
No lodging for thee, but a cold hard stone?
So many hearts on earth, and yet not one
Receive thee?

Sure there is room within our hearts good store;
For they can lodge transgressions by the score:
Thousands of toys dwell there, yet out of door
They leave thee.

But that which shows them large, shows them unfit.
Whatever sin did this pure rock commit,
Which holds thee now? Who hath indicted it
Of murder?

Where our hard hearts have took up stones to brain thee,
And missing this, most falsely did arraign thee;
Only these stones in quiet entertain thee,
And order.

And as of old, the law by heav’nly art,
Was writ in stone; so thou, which also art
The letter of the word, find’st no fit heart
To hold thee.

Yet do we still persist as we began,
And so should perish, but that nothing can,
Though it be cold, hard, foul, from loving man
Withhold thee.

-- George Herbert (1593-1633), Welsh- born Anglican priest and poet

The Search

Whither, O whither art Thou fled,
                    My Lord, my Love ?
My searches are my daily bread,
                    Yet never prove.

My knees pierce the earth, mine eyes the sky;
                    And yet the sphere
And center both to me deny
                    That Thou art there.

Yet can I mark how herbs below
                    Grow green and gay,
As if to meet Thee they did know,
                    While I decay.

Yet can I mark how stars above
                    Simper and shine,
As having keys unto Thy love,
                    While poor I pine.

I sent a sigh to seek Thee out,
                    Deep drawn in pain,
Winged like an arrow; but my scout
                    Returns in vain.

I turned another (having store)
                    Into a groan,
Because the search was dumb before;
                    But all was one.

Lord, dost Thou some new fabric mold
                    Which favor wins,
And keeps Thee present; leaving the old
                    Unto their sins?

Where is my God ? what hidden place
                    Conceals Thee still?
What covert dare eclipse Thy face?
                    Is it Thy will?

O let not that of anything;
                    Let rather brass,
Or steel, or mountains be Thy ring,
                    And I will pass.

Thy will such an entrenching is,
                    As passeth thought:
To it all strength, all subtleties
                    
Thy will such a strange distance is,
                    As that to it
East and West touch, the poles do kiss,
                    And parallels meet.

Since then my grief must be as large
                    As is Thy space,
Thy distance from me; see my charge,
                    Lord, see my case.

O take these bars, these lengths, away;
                    Turn, and restore me:
Be not Almighty, let me say,
                    Against, but for me.

When Thou dost turn, and wilt be near,
                    What edge so keen,
What point so piercing can appear
                    To come between?

For as Thy absence doth excel
                    All distance known,
So doth Thy nearness bear the bell,
                    Making two one.

--George Herbert,  English priest and poet

The Altar

A broken ALTAR, Lord, thy servant rears, 

Made of a heart and cemented with tears; 

Whose parts are as thy hand did frame; 

No workman's tool hath touch'd the same. 

A HEART 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. 

Oh, let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine, 

And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine. 

-- George Herbert (1593-1633), Anglican poet and priest

Constancy

Who is the honest man?
He that does still and strongly good pursue,
To God, his neighbor, and himself most true:
Whom neither force nor fawning can
Unpin, or wrench from giving all their due.

Whose honesty is not
So loose or easy, that a ruffling wind
Can blow away, or glittering look it blind:
Who rides his sure and even trot,
While the world now rides by, now lags behind.

Who, when great trials come,
Nor seeks, nor shuns them; but does calmly stay,
Till he the thing and the example weigh:
All being brought into a sum,
What place or person calls for, he does pay.

Whom none can work or woo
To use in any thing a trick or sleight;
For above all things he abhors deceit:
His words and works and fashion too
All of a piece, and all are clear and straight.

Who never melts or thaws
At close temptations: when the day is done,
His goodness sets not, but in dark can run:
The sun to others writes their laws,
And is their virtue; Virtue is his Sun.

Who when he is to treat
With sick folks, women, those whom passions sway,
Allows for that, and keeps his constant way:
Whom others faults do not defeat;
But though men fail him, yet his part does play.

Whom nothing can procure,
When the wide world runs bias from his will,
To writhe his limbs, and share, not mend the ill,
This is the Mark-man, safe and sure,
Who still is right, and prays to be so still.

--George Herbert (1593-1633), English priest and poet

Paradise

I bless thee, Lord, because I GROW
Among thy trees, which in a ROW
The thee both fruit and order OWE.

What open force, what hidden CHARM
Can blast my fruit, or bring me HARM
While the inclosure is thine ARM?

Inclose me still for fear I START.
Be to me rather sharp and TART,
Than let me want thy hand and ART.

When thou dost greater judgments SPARE,
And with thy knife but prune and PARE,
Ev'n fruitful trees more fruitful ARE.

Such sharpness shows the sweetest FRIEND:
Such cuttings rather heal than REND:
And such beginnings touch their END.

--George Herbert (1593-1633), from Garden Poems, 1996

Easter-wings

Lord, Who createdst man in wealth and store,

Though foolishly he lost the same,

Decaying more and more,

Till he became

Most poore:

With Thee

O let me rise,

As larks, harmoniously,

And sing this day Thy victories: 

Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

My tender age in sorrow did beginne;

And still with sicknesses and shame

Thou didst so punish sinne,

That I became

Most thinne.

With Thee

Let me combine,

And feel this day Thy victorie;

For, if I imp my wing on Thine,

Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

-- George Herbert (1593-1633), English priest and poet, from The Temple (1633)

Sepulchre

Oh blessed body! Whither art thou thrown?
No lodging for thee, but a cold hard stone?
So many hearts on earth, and yet not one
Receive thee?

Sure there is room within our hearts good store;
For they can lodge transgressions by the score:
Thousands of toys dwell there, yet out of door
They leave thee.

But that which shows them large, shows them unfit.
Whatever sin did this pure rock commit,
Which holds thee now? Who hath indicted it
Of murder?

Where our hard hearts have took up stones to brain thee,
And missing this, most falsely did arraign thee;
Only these stones in quiet entertain thee,
And order.

And as of old, the law by heav’nly art,
Was writ in stone; so thou, which also art
The letter of the word, find’st no fit heart
To hold thee.

Yet do we still persist as we began,
And so should perish, but that nothing can,
Though it be cold, hard, foul, from loving man
Withhold thee.

--George Herbert (1593-1633), English priest and poet


Image: Andrea Mantegna, Lamentation over Christ, ca. 1475-1478

Prayer

Prayer, the Church's banquet, Angels' age,
     God's breath in man returning to his birth,
     The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heaven and earth;
Engine against the Almighty, sinner's tower,
     Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
     The six-days' world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
     Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,
     Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
     Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
     The land of spices; something understood.

--George Herbert (1593-1633), English priest and poet

Detail from Walter Ufer's Hunger, 1919; in the collection of Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa.

The Elixir

Teach me, my God and King,
          In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything
          To do it as for Thee.

          Not rudely, as a beast,
          To run into an action;
But still to make Thee prepossest,
          And give it his perfection.

          A man that looks on glass,
          On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
          And then the heav'n espy.

          All may of Thee partake:
          Nothing can be so mean,
Which with his tincture—"for Thy sake"—
          Will not grow bright and clean.

          A servant with this clause
          Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
          Makes that and th' action fine.

          This is the famous stone
          That turneth all to gold;
For that which God doth touch and own
          Cannot for less be told.


-- George Herbert (1593-1633), English priest and poet, from The Temple (1633)

Lent: Ash Wednesday

Welcome dear feast of Lent: who loves not thee,
He loves not Temperance, or Authority,
But is composed of passion.
The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church says, now:
Give to your Mother, what you would allow
To every Corporation.

* * *

It's true, we cannot reach Christ’s fortieth day;
Yet to go part of that religious way,
Is better than to rest:
We cannot reach our Savior's purity;
Yet are bid, Be holy ev’n as he.
In both let's do our best.

Who goes in the way which Christ has gone,
Is much more sure to meet with him, than one
Who travels the by-ways:
Perhaps my God, though he be far before,
May turn, and take me by the hand, and more
May strengthen my decays.

Yet Lord instruct us to improve our fast
By starving sin and taking such repast
As may our faults control:
That ev’ry man may revel at his door,
Not in his parlor; banqueting the poor,
And among those his soul.

-- George Herbert (1593-1633), English priest and poet, from The Temple (1633)

The Flower

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
       are Thy returns! Even as the flowers in spring,
    to which, besides their own demean,
       the late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
          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;
         where they together
         all the hard weather,
    dead to the world, keep house unknown.

    These are Thy wonders, Lord of power,
       killing and quickening, bringing down to hell
    and up to heaven in an hour;
       making a chiming of a passing-bell.
         We say amiss
         this or that is;
    Thy word is all, if we could spell.

    Oh, that I once past changing were,
       fast in Thy paradise, where no flower can wither!
    Many a spring I shoot up fair,
       offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither;
         nor doth my flower
         want a spring shower,
    my sins and I joining together.

    But while I grow in a straight line,
       still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own,
    Thy anger comes, and I decline.
       What frost to that? What pole is not the zone
         where all things burn,
         when Thou dost turn,
    and the least frown of Thine is shown?

    And now in age I bud again;
       after so many deaths I love and write;
    I once more smell the dew and rain,
       and relish versing. O my only Light,
         it cannot be
         that I am he
    on whom Thy tempests fell all night.

    These are Thy wonders, Lord of love,
       to make us see we are but flowers that glide;
    which when we once can find and prove,
       Thou hast a garden for us where to bide.
         Who would be more,
         swelling through store,
    forfeit their paradise by their pride.

-- George Herbert (1593-1633), English priest and poet, from The Temple (1633)

Life

I made a posie, while the day ran by:
Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band.
But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away,
And withered in my hand.

My hand was next to them, and then my heart:
I took, without more thinking, in good part
Time’s gentle admonition;
Who did so sweetly death’s sad taste convey,
Making my mind to smell my fatal day;
Yet sugaring the suspicion.

Farewell dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures,
I follow straight without complaints or grief,
Since if my scent be good, I care not if
It be as short as yours.

--George Herbert (1593-1633), English priest and poet

The Agony

Philosphers have measured mountains,
Fatholmed the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walked with a staff to heaven, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it does more behoove:
Yet few there are that sounds them, Sin and Love.
Whoever would know Sin, let him repair:
Unto mount olivet; there he shall see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skin, his garments bloody be.
Sin is that press and vice which forces pain
To hunt his cruel food through every vein.
Whoever does not know Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine
Which my God feels as blood, but I as wine.

--George Herbert (1593-1633), English priest and poet