Casting my mind back to George Herbert

He was one of my favorite old poets. I still remember The Collar, reading it for some English class or another in college, sucked in and sucker-punched by the last two lines. I felt faint in church as a girl, saw the black dots floating in front of my eyes as I stood and sat and stood and kneeled again. What did I love in such seriousness? Where did it fly? 

Prayer (I)

Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,

         God's breath in man returning to his birth,

         The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth

Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,

         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)

The Perfect Poem as a Response to One of My Posts

I posted about a typical day in the life the other day -- the kind of day that calls up my prodigious sense of balance but that also calls for my prodigiously sharp tongue. I wrote in teensy tinesy letters that certain sayings -- those well-meant but maddeningly cliched phrases -- do not help me to balance further. I think I also added that those who use them are either insane or brain-addled. And as things go, it was that teensy-tinesy sentence that provoked the most comments. 


One of the responses included a poem forwarded by one of my very favorite blog friends, and while I'm a nerdy lover of George Herbert's poetry, I had never read this one. Mr. Herbert was a great metaphysical poet of the 17th century -- when I first read his poem The Collar in a college poetry class, I nearly swooned (had to use that word). You can read it at the end of this post from a couple of years ago. 


The poem sent to me today is from Herbert's larger work The Temple. Sacred Poems, and private ejaculations, published in 1633. Reader, you couldn't ask for a more fantastic title for a book of poetry, could you?


How terrific is this alongside my vastly less eloquent and far more petulant ejaculations?


Bitter-sweet

AH my deare angrie Lord,
Since thou dost love, yet strike;
Cast down, yet help afford;
Sure I will do the like.
   
I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve:
And all my sowre-sweet dayes
I will lament, and love.