The Devotional Poetics Of George Herbert

`Are the poems closer to prayer than art, and therefore best read by Herbert`s fellow believers?` (Helen Wilcox)

Herbert`s poems are a reflection of his spiritual beliefs as an Anglican priest. In contrast to later Modernist poets like Eliot and Pound who devote their technical ingenuities to crafting overt, complex and contradictory speaking personae, Herbert proffers a resolute belief in God; his poetics is a devotional one. Accordingly, the practice of prayer was of fundamental importance to Herbert, and this is evident in his collection of poems entitled "The Temple". Virtually all of the poems show attempted communions with God through the characteristic poses of the prayer: supplication, adoration, and confession, which are continually adopted by the speakers of the poems. T.S. Eliot wrote that Herbert`s inspiration as a poet came `only in the Faith, in hunger and thirst after godliness, in his self-questioning and his religious meditation`. One cannot separate Herbert`s conception of his role as Parson from his methods as a poet. Despite Sir Philip Sidney`s claim in `The Apology for Poesie` that `the poet nothing affirms and therefore never lieth`, Herbert`s use of the poetic medium affirms a great deal. The oscillations of personal religious conviction are communicated in "The Temple", and ultimately the collection affirms a victory of faith in the love of God. In "The Country Parson", Herbert claims that `it is necessary that all Christians should pray twice a day every day of the week, and four times on Sunday if they be well`. His poems "Mattens" and "Even-song" clearly refer to his daily rhythm of prayer. Yet, prayer is a form with a specific communicative aim just as poetic forms have specific shape and communicative aims. What is ultimately of most importance, however, is the catechetical and didactic impulse that pervades Herbert`s poetry. Through prayer, Herbert seeks God; he exalts him, questions him, even lashes out at him. In a discussion of prayer theory in the seventeenth century, Cynthia Garret claims that the English prayer manuals of the time `reveal a complex theory of prayer which acknowledges, at times even embraces, the contingent and imperfect nature of communication with the divine`. Prayer was understood as dialogue, not monologue, and accordingly we find Herbert straining his ears for some divine response:

Me thoughts I heard one calling, Child! And I reply`d, My Lord. ("The Collar" ll.35 - 36)

The absence, or at least the uncertainty, of God`s response can cause great anxiety. Herbert`s poem, "Clasping of hands", communicates in its title the consummate physical image of one in prayer, with specific connotations of urgency and desperation. The poem is frantic in its constant shifting of possession and definition:

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 or thine. (ll.1 - 10)

Herbert seeks some form of union between himself and God, as indicated by the constant repetition of the rhyming `thine` and `mine`. The poem ends with an emphatic plea:

O be mine still! still make me thine! Or rather make no Thine and Mine! (ll.19 - 20)

Herbert punctuates these lines with three exclamation marks; his frantic babbling throughout the two stanzas reaches its climax in this clamorous plea for a transcending of his separation from God. In his poem "Prayer", we find Herbert at perfect ease. Absolute faith in the spiritual union of God and man through prayer is dreamily conveyed in the descri ption of `Gods breath in man returning to his birth`. The poem positively soars in its ecstatic glorification of the power of prayer:

A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear; Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse (ll.8 - 9)

The dominant impression in "The Temple" is that Herbert ultimately comes to feel God`s love:

My God, thou art all love. Not one poor minute scapes thy breast, But brings a favour from above; And in this love, more then in bed, I rest.

("Even-song" ll.29 - 32)

Whilst Herbert`s poems are entitled "private ejaculations", they have a public purpose. Joseph Summers discusses the similarity between Herbert`s poems and public prayer, and argues that `in secular terms the poem was both more private and more pleasant than the prayer; it was nearer to the Elizabethan love lyrics,` for `the conventional praise, plea, and lament of the love poems often furnished a frame of reference and a metaphorical texture` for the religious lyrics of Herbert. However, the audience of "The Temple" was, Summers presumes, `that of the public prayer or the communicated meditation` . Cynthia Garret refers to Protestant theology as having `democratized` private prayer, and it is plausible to view Herbert`s poetry as actively participating in this process of democratisation. As rector of the small rural parish of St Andrew`s Bemerton, Herbert became very well acquainted with all of his parishioners, for he was deeply involved in their lives. In addition to the numerous daily services within the church, Herbert would visit his parishioners` homes, administer basic medical treatment, and even resolve legal disputes. Herbert outlines these duties in his treatise "The Country Parson". In chapter VI of this small handbook, Herbert describes the dynamics of prayer between parson and congregation: `being first affected himself, hee may affect also his people.` Herbert explicitly declares the same intention for his poetry. In his instructions to his friend Nicholas Ferrar, Herbert stated that if Ferrar believed that the poems could be of comfort to any `dejected poor soul,` then `let it be made public`, and `if not`, then `burn it.` The generic discrepancy between poem and prayer is irrelevant when one considers the uniform intention behind both forms for Herbert. In chapter XIII of "The Country Parson", Herbert emphatically states the two most important "Rules" by which he conducts his life: `The first whereof is, Let all things be done decently, and in order: The second, Let all things be done to edification`. This principle of "edification" therefore over-rides any notion of poetic wit or artistry for its own sake. As part of the metaphysical school of poets, Herbert is partly defined by his great technical ability, his use of elaborate and extended metaphors and conceits, but unlike a poet such as Donne, his wit is not ostentatious and self-aggrandizing. Wit, in Herbert, is functional: his rhetorical prowess tries to raise one`s thoughts to God. The didactic impulse is quite evident in the opening poem of "The Temple". This poem, "The Church-Porch", adopts a forceful admonitory tone, and is full of commands such as `Abstain`, `Drink not`, `Take not`, `Lie not`, and `Envie not`. The poem clearly depicts a preoccupation with education and edification, rule, introspection, and virtue. The purpose is to `Rhyme thee to good`. This heavy sermonising tone is not, however, typical of the "The Temple". The didactic elements, however, are omni-present even in the most conspicuously artful and accessible of the poems. In "Church-monuments", for example, Herbert is allegorical. The poem is set at a macabre lesson on human impermanence and atrophy. The monuments of the poem`s title remind Herbert of the inevitable `dissolution` of the body that arrives with `the blast of death`s incessant motion`. Humans foolishly revere `Jet and Marble` as symbols of permanence, for they too `shall bow, and kneel, and fall down flat` when faced with the unrelenting and all-encompassing onslaught of material decay. The dominant image of the poem is dust, the word is used at least once in each of the four stanzas. The final stanza conjures the image of the human body metamorphosed into an hour-glass:

And wanton in they cravings, thou mayest know, That flesh is but the glasse, which holds the dust That measures all our time; which also shall Be crumbled into dust. Mark here below How tame these ashes are, how free from lust, That thou mayst fit thy self against thy fall. (ll. 19 - 24)

Herbert structures his poem as a mirror image of the dust that sifts downwards through the hour-glass. The enjambment at the end of the first stanza allows the words to seamlessly spill over into the next stanza, and the sentences continue to link the following two stanzas in a continual downward flow of words. Whilst the technical and imaginative effectiveness of the poem could delight Christians and non-Christians alike, the point of the poem is not simply to delight the reader. Herbert`s lesson is taken directly from the Bible, and his use of artifice can be directly related to the theological conception of God as `the Great Artificer and as Absolute Beauty.` The beauty of Herbert`s poetry, in this conception, merely reflects the beauty and the truth of `the divine pattern`. Writing on Herbert, T.S. Eliot notes that the question of `the relation of enjoyment to belief - the question whether a poem has more to give us if we share the beliefs of its author`, has no satisfactory answer. At the centre of this problem lies the fact that each individual is autonomous and responds uniquely to every work of art. Eliot places emphasis on `enjoyment`, but this is but one of a countless multitude of responses that a work of art may elicit. In regards to Herbert`s poetry, the question of `enjoyment` seems beside the point, given that his intention is to affect and engage the reader on a much deeper level. Moreover, Herbert himself claimed that the `Country Parson is generally sad, because hee knows nothing but the Crosse of Christ, his minde being defixed on it with those nailes wherewith his Master was`. Eliot goes on to argue that it would `be a gross error to assume that Herbert`s poems are of value only for Christians - or, still more narrowly, only for members of his own church.` Despite the `exquisite craftsmanship, the extraordinary metrical virtuosity,` and `the verbal felicities` of "The Temple", Eliot insists that it is the poems` content that justifies their place in the literary canon. L.C. Knights asserts that the fundamental value of "The Temple" lies in the `wide application of Herbert`s self-discovery` . Eliot would agree, for both critics view Herbert`s poetry as an honest record of his personal spiritual struggles; what F.E. Hutchinson describes as `colloquies of the soul with God or self-communings which seek to bring order into that complex personality of his which he analyses so unsparingly`. Indeed, it is impossible to dispute that Herbert`s poetry has value for non-Christians. Whilst Herbert grapples specifically within the terms of his own religious context, his fluctuating moods express sentiments that resonate with all human experience. This concern with the unstable chaos of everyday existence is at the heart of many of Herbert`s poems. The frequently quoted "Affliction"(I) provides the clearest expression of these fluctuations:

At first thou gav`st me milk and sweetness; I had my wish and way: My dayes were straw`d with flow`rs and happinesse; There was no moneth but May. But with my years sorrow did twist and grow, And made a partie unawares for wo. My flesh began unto my soul in pain, Sicknesse cleave my bones; Consuming agues dwell in ev`ry vein, And tune my breath to grones. Sorrow was all my soul; I scarce beleeved, Till grief did tell me roundly, that I lived.

(ll. 19 - 30)

The contentment of the first four lines comes to an abrupt end with the sudden crushing conjunction of `But`. The serene sense of gratification communicated in the softly sounding `wish and way` is suddenly overcome by the groans of a man twisting and turning, writhing in agony. "Affliction" should not, however, be taken as an isolated expression of pain and purposelessness beyond any resolution. Each poem in "The Temple" need be considered in relation to the others. "Affliction" appears early in the collection, and later we find the poem "Assurance", which seeks to balance and resolve the anxious sentiments of "Affliction". Joseph Summers argues that "Herbert had shown in the poems how it was possible, in the midst of those afflictions and conflicts, to achieve joy and assurance of salvation through an understanding of the Covenant of Grace`. It is no wonder, as Summers notes, that the only poem in which Herbert `nakedly expressed` a `paralysing doubt` over his own salvation - a poem entitled `Perseverance`- is not included in "The Temple". The notion that "The Temple" constitutes an unwaveringly honest record of Herbert`s spiritual life is undermined by the fact of this omission. The suspicion, evident in "Affliction", that God might have betrayed the Covenant, and the subsequent threat in the poem to abandon Him for `some other master` is cancelled out by the firm assertions of "Assurance" with its images of security and steadfastness. Herbert addresses God:

...in this league, which now my foes invade. Thou art not onely to perform thy part, But also mine; as when the league was made Thou didst at once thy self indite, And hold my hand, while I did write.

Wherefore, if thou canst fail, Then can thy truth and I: but while rocks stand, And rivers stirre, thou canst not shrink or quail: Yea, when both rocks and all things shall disband, Then shalt thou be my rock and tower, And make their ruine praise thy power. (ll. 26 - 36)

Eliot and Knight would hail Herbert`s "Assurance" as the record of a personal `achievement of faith`. Whilst this may be the case, Herbert`s purpose in compiling "The Temple" was not so much to leave a biographical record of his internal conflicts and spiritual growth, (analogous to the spiritual autobiography form from Saint Augustine to Bunyan), so much as to provide a kind of spiritual guide in poetic form. In reading so many of the poems, one senses the presence of a preacher behind the poet - most of all in "The Church-Porch", and elsewhere, particularly in those poems beginning with prayer-like apostrophe, the act of reading implicates - at least ostensibly - the reader in the act of prayer. Herbert the parson, as Herbert the poet, achieves a remarkable feat: he continues to preach beyond the grave. While art is a complex thing to define and will depend on formal considerations with established standards of excellence and on the evaluative abilities of the person reading it, all writing has its context which might be implicitly or explicitly discernible - in Herbert this is inexorably a religious one. The structure of "The Temple" - and indeed the title itself - invites an imaginative association between the collection of poems and the physical structure of a church. The "Church-Porch" marks our entrance into Herbert`s spiritual school. It`s subtitle "Perirrhanterium" refers to the aspergill, and it is easy to imagine the spirit of Herbert hovering between the porch and the lintel, ushering and sprinkling. To read "The Temple" and not share Herbert`s religious beliefs is an experience quite like that of the non-Christian who enters a grand church or cathedral. The magnificence of man`s artifice will likely humble and enamour the beholder; they will marvel at the genius of humankind; the architecture will begin to fulfil the purpose of its design by drawing their eyes upwards, but they will not turn their thoughts to God, and Herbert certainly would feel that they were missing the point.