Submission

But that thou art my wisdome, Lord,
              And both mine eyes are thine,
My minde would be extreamly stirr'd
              For missing my designe.

Were it not better to bestow
              Some place and power on me?
Then should thy praises with me grow,
              And share in my degree.

But when I thus dispute and grieve,
              I do resume my sight,
And pilfring what I once did give,
              Disseize thee of thy right.

How know I, if thou shouldst me raise,
              That I should then raise thee?
Perhaps great places and thy praise
              Do not so well agree.

Wherefore unto my gift I stand,
              I will no more advise:
Only do thou lend me a hand,
              Since thou has both mine eyes.

—George Herbert, The English Poems of George Herbert (ed. Helen Wilcox; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 47.

The Hand That Rocks The Cradle Is The Hand That Rules The World

BLESSINGS on the hand of women!
Angels guard its strength and grace.
In the palace, cottage, hovel,
Oh, no matter where the place;
Would that never storms assailed it,
Rainbows ever gently curled,
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.

Infancy's the tender fountain,
Power may with beauty flow,
Mothers first to guide the streamlets,
From them souls unresting grow—
Grow on for the good or evil,
Sunshine streamed or evil hurled,
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.

Woman, how divine your mission,
Here upon our natal sod;
Keep—oh, keep the young heart open
Always to the breath of God!
All true trophies of the ages
Are from mother-love impearled,
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.

Blessings on the hand of women!
Fathers, sons, and daughters cry,
And the sacred song is mingled
With the worship in the sky—
Mingles where no tempest darkens,
Rainbows evermore are hurled; 

For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.

 —William Ross Wallace (1819–1891)

Unholy Bound—Unless You Ravish Me

Batter my heart, three-personed God . . .

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

—John Donne, "Batter My Heart," lines 1, 12–14

Aaron

                       Holiness on the head,
               Light and perfections on the breast,
Harmonious bells below, raising the dead
               To lead them unto life and rest.
                       Thus are true Aarons dressed.

                       Profaneness in my head,
               Defects and darkness in my breast,
A noise of passions ringing me for dead
               Unto a place where is no rest.
                       Poor priest thus am I dressed.

                       Only another head
               I have, another heart and breast,
Another music, making live not dead,
               Without whom I could have no rest:
                       In him I am well dressed.

                       Christ is my only head,
               My alone only heart and breast,
My only music, striking me ev'n dead;
               That to the old man I may rest,
                       And be in him new dressed.

                       So holy in my head,
               Perfect and light in my dear breast,
My doctrine tuned by Christ (who is not dead,
               But lives in me while I do rest),
                      Come people; Aaron's dressed.

—George Herbert, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 164.

The Best Lack All Conviction

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

—W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming."

Love (3)

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
                                Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
                                From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
                                If I lacked anything.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
                                Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
                                I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
                                Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
                              Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
                               My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
                               So I did sit and eat.

—George Herbert, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 178.

Dullness

Why do I languish thus, drooping and dull,
                    As if I were all earth?
O give me quickness, that I may with mirth
                           Praise thee brimfull!

—George Herbert, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 107.

Nature

         Full of rebellion, I would die,
         Or fight, or travel, or deny
That thou hast ought to do with me.
                           O tame my heart;
                   It is thy highest art
To captivate strong holds to thee.

If thou shalt let this venom lurk,
And in suggestions fume and work,
My soul will turn to bubbles straight,
                            And thence by kind
                    Vanish into a wind,
Making thy workmanship deceit.

O smooth my rugged heart, and there
Engrave thy rev'rend law and fear;
Or make a new one, since the old
                           Is sapless grown,
                  And a much fitter stone
To hide my dust, than thee to hold.

—George Herbert, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 39–40.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

—Rudyard Kipling

(Source.)

Easter

The last two stanzas of Herbert's "Easter":

     The Sun arising in the East,
     Though he give light, and th' East perfume;
     If they should offer to contest
     With thy arising, they presume.

     Can there be any day but this,
     Though many suns to shine endeavour?
     We count three hundred, but we miss:
     There is but one, and that one ever.

—George Herbert, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 37.

Delight Turned into Sacrifice

Why poetry for the Christian? Why even bother? Apart from its aesthetic value, it doesn't seem to have the powers of other modes of communication to transform and renew the mind. And that's the goal, isn't it—conformity to the mind of Christ? So why bother? Let's press on with producing more crystal-clear prose in doing the Lord's work.

Or so it might be thought.

Some might think: Why not just sermons, systematic theologies, lectures, and discursive? Surely poetry can't communicate as much and as clearly as more didactic modes of communication. Or can it? Or can it perhaps communicate even more, passing on to the soul what other modes could never dream of communicating? Perhaps it has unique powers able to penetrate deeper, at least in certain respects.

Think about it. And you decide. Read some powerful poetry that communicates familiar and precious truths. And consider this first stanza of George Herbert's poem The Church-Porch:

Thou, whose sweet youth and early hopes enhance
Thy rate and price, and mark thee for a treasure;
Harken unto a Verser, who may chance
Rhyme thee to good, and make a bait of pleasure.
     A verse may find him, who a sermon flies,
     And turn delight into a sacrifice.

—George Herbert, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 6.

Constancy

                       Who is the honest man?
He that doth 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 doth calmly stay,
Till he the thing and the example weigh:
           All being brought into a sum,
What place or person calls for, he doth pay.

                         Whom none can work or woo
To use in anything 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 tentations: when the day is done,
His goodness sets not, but in dark can run:
             The sun to others writeth 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 doth play.

                       Who 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, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 66.

The Holy Communion

Not in rich furniture, or fine array,
           Nor in a wedge of gold,
           Thou, who from me was sold,
        To me dost now thyself convey;
For so thou shouldst without me still have been,
            Leaving within me sin:

But by the way of nourishment and strength
            Thou creep'st into my breast;
            Making thy way my rest,
         And thy small quantities my length;
Which spread their forces into every part,
            Meeting sin's force and art.

Yet can these not get over to my soul,
            Leaping the wall that parts
            Our souls and fleshly hearts;
        But as th' outworks, they may control
My rebel-flesh, and carrying thy name,
            Affright both sin and shame.

Only thy grace, which with these elements comes,
            Knoweth the ready way,
            And hath the privy key,
        Op'ning the soul's most subtle rooms;
While those to spirits refined, at door attend
            Dispatches from their friend.

Give me my captive soul, or take
         My body also thither.
Another lift like this will make
         Them both to be together.

Before that sin turned flesh to stone,
         And all our lump to leaven;
A fervent sigh might well have blown
         Our innocent earth to heaven.

For sure when Adam did not know
         To sin, or sin to smother;
He might to heav'n from Paradise go,
         As from one room t'another.

Thou hast restored us to this case
        By this thy heav'nly blood;
Which I can go to, when I please,
        And leave th' earth to their food.

—George Herbert, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 46–47.

Antiphon (I)

Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing,
                                       My God and King.

         The heav'ns are not too high,
         His praise may thither fly:
         The earth is not too low,
         His praises there may grow.

Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing,
                                       My God and King.

         The church with psalms must shout,
         No door can keep them out:
         But above all, the heart
         Must bear the longest part.

Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing,
                                       My God and King.

—George Herbert, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 47.

Unbroken, Uninterrupted Thought: The Writer's Traffic and Trade

On the poet's utter need for solitude:

The poem, as it starts to form in the writer's mind, and on paper, can't abide interrruption. I don't mean that it won't but that it can't. . . . To interrupt the writer from the line of thought is to wake the dreamer from the dream. The dreamer cannot enter that dream, precisely as it was unfolding, ever again becaue the line of thought is more than that: it is a line of feeling as well. Until interruption occurs, this feeling is as real as the desk on which the poet is working. For the poem is not nailed together, or formed from one logical point to another, which might be retrievable—it is created, through work in which the interweavings of craft, thought, and feeling are intricate, mysterious, and altogether "mortal." Interrupt—and the whole structure can collapse. 

—Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry (Harcourt: 1994), 117. 

Ungratefulness

Lord, with what bounty and rare clemency
                   Hast thou redeemed us from the grave!
                           If thou hadst let us run,
                   Gladly had man adored the sun,
                           And thought his god most brave;
Where now we shall be better gods than he.

Thou has but two rare cabinets full of treasure,
                  The Trinity, and Incarnation:
                         Thou has unlocked them both,
                  And made them jewels to betroth
                          The work of thy creation
Unto thyself in everlasting pleasure.

The statelier cabinet is the Trinity,
                    Whose sparkling light access denies:
                           Therefore thou dost not show
                     This fully to us, till death blow
                           The dust into our eyes:
For by that powder thou wilt make us see.

But all thy sweets are packed up in the other;
                    Thy mercies thither flock and flow:
                            That as the first affrights,
                    This may allure us with delights;
                            Because this box we know;
For we have all of us just such another.

But man is close, reserved, and dark to thee:
                    When thou demandest but a heart,
                           He cavils instantly.
                     In his poor cabinet of bone
                             Sins have their box apart,
Defrauding thee, who gavest two for one.

—George Herbert, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 75-76.

Love (2)

Immortal Heat, O let thy greater flame
    Attract the lesser to it: let those fires,
    Which shall consume the world, first make it tame;
And kindle in our hearts such true desires,
As may consume our lusts, and make thee way.
    Then shall our hearts pant thee; then shall our brain
    All here invention on thine Altar lay,
And there in hymns send back thy fire again:
Our eyes shall see thee, which before saw dust;
    Dust blown by wit, till that they both were blind:
    Thou shalt recover all they goods in kind,
Who wert disseised by usurping lust:
    All knees shall bow to thee; all wits shall rise,
    And praise him who did make and mend our eyes.

—George Herbert, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 48.

Grace

My stock lies dead, and no increase
Doth my dull husbandry improve:
O let thy graces without cease
                                      Drop from above!

If still the sun should hide his face,
Thy house would but a dungeon prove,
Thy works night's captives: O let grace
                                      Drop from above!

The dew doth ev'ry morning fall;
And shall the dew out-strip thy Dove?
The dew, for which grass cannot call,
                                      Drop from above.

Death is still working like a mole,
And digs my grave at each remove:
Let grace work too, and on my soul
                                     Drop from above.

Sin is still hammering my heart
Unto a hardness, void of love:
Let suppling grace, to cross his art,
                                      Drop from above.

O come! for thou dost know the way.
Or if to me thou wilt not move,
Remove me, where I need not say,
                                      Drop from above.

—George Herbert, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 54.

Redemption

Having been tenant long to a rich Lord,
       Not thriving, I resolved to be bold,
       And make a suit unto him, to afford
A new small-rented lease, and cancel th' old.
In heaven at his manor I him sought:
       They told me there, that he was lately gone
       About some land, which he had dearly bought
Long since on earth, to take possession.
I straight returned, and knowing his great birth,
       Sought him accordingly in great resorts;
       In cities, theaters, gardens, parks, and courts:
At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth
       Of thieves and murderers: there I him espied,
       Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died.

—George Herbert, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 35–36.

Dullness

Why do I languish, thus, drooping and dull,
                    As if I were all earth?
O give me quickness, that I may with mirth
                          Praise thee brimfull!

The wanton lover in a curious strain
                   Can praise his fairest fair;
And with quaint metaphors her curled hair
                           Curl o'er again.

Thou art my loveliness, my life, my light,
                   Beauty alone to me:
Thy bloody death and undeserved, makes thee
                          Pure red and white.

When all perfections as but one appear,
                    That those thy form doth show,
The very dust, where thou dost tread and go,
                           Makes beauties here;

Where are my lines then? my approaches? views?
                    Where are my window-songs?
Lovers are still pretending, and ev'n wrongs
                            Sharpen their Muse:

But I am lost in flesh, whose sugared lies
                   Still mock me, and grow bold;
Sure thou didst put a mind there, if I could
                           Find where it lies.

Lord, clear thy gift, that with a constant wit
                    I may but look towards thee:
Look only; for to love thee, who can be,
                            What angel fit?
                 
—George Herbert, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin Classics, 1991), 107–108.