My Sour-Sweet Days

George Herbert and the Journey of the Soul

Mark Oakley

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780281080335
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Europäische Poesie

Mark Oakley reveals George Herbert as a fine companion with whom to examine the journey of the soul. His poems are 'heart-work and heaven-work', embracing love and closeness, anger and despair, reconciliation and hope. There is too an appealing and audacious playfulness about Herbert: he seems to take God on, knowing God will win, confident God will not abandon him. This sense of relationship with God as primarily friendship is one of many intriguing and healing aspects we are invited to consider. 'My Sour-Sweet Days contains forty well-chosen poems by George Herbert (widely considered the greatest devotional poet in the English language), each of which is followed by a short but profound reflection by Mark Oakley. The combination is excellent: richly expressive poems and accessible personal meditations. This book powerfully demonstrates how poetry can bring comfort, refreshment and renewed energy to our spiritual lives.'
Professor Helen Wilcox, editor of the critically acclaimed edition of The English Poems of George Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 2007)'It's extremely unusual to meet anyone who isn't a specialist who has such a subtle feeling for language as Mark Oakley does.'
Sir Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate'Heavenly.' The Tablet

Affliction (I)

When first thou didst entice to thee my heart,

I thought the service brave;

So many joyes I writ down for my part,

Besides what I might have

Out of my stock of naturall delights,

Augmented with thy gracious benefits.

I looked on thy furniture so fine,

And made it fine to me:

Thy glorious houshold-stuffe did me entwine,

And ’tice me unto thee.

Such starres I counted mine: both heav’n and earth;

Payd me my wages in a world of mirth.

What pleasures could I want, whose King I served?

Where joyes my fellows were.

Thus argu’d into hopes, my thoughts reserved

No place for grief or fear.

Therefore my sudden soul caught at the place,

And made her youth and fierceness seek thy face.

At first thou gav’st me milk and sweetnesses;

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 yeares sorrow did twist and grow,

And made a partie unawares for wo.

My flesh began unto my soul in pain,

Sicknesses 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.

When I got health, thou took’st away my life,

And more; for my friends die:

My mirth and edge was lost; a blunted knife

Was of more use then I.

Thus thinne and lean without a fence or friend,

I was blown through with ev’ry storm and winde.

Whereas my birth and spirit rather took

The way that takes the town;

Thou didst betray me to a lingring book,

And wrap me in a gown.

I was entangled in the world of strife,

Before I had the power to change my life.

Yet, for I threatned oft the siege to raise,

Not simpring all mine age,

Thou often didst with Academick praise

Melt and dissolve my rage.

I took thy sweetned pill, till I came neare;

I could not go away, nor persevere.

Yet lest perchance I should too happie be

In my unhappinesse,

Turning my purge to food, thou throwest me

Into more sicknesses.

Thus doth thy power crosse-bias me, not making

Thine own gift good, yet me from my wayes taking.

Now I am here, what thou wilt do with me

None of my books will show.

I reade, and sigh, and wish I were a tree;

For sure then I should grow

To fruit or shade: at least some bird would trust

Her houshold to me, and I should be just.

Yet, though thou troublest me, I must be meek;

In weaknesse must be stout.

Well, I will change the service, and go seek

Some other master out.

Ah my deare God! though I am clean forgot,

Let me not love thee, if I love thee not.

It is thought that Herbert wrote this autobiographical poem sometime in his mid-thirties, before his ordination. It is an extra­ordinarily honest bit of spiritual stocktaking, often accusatory towards God, and just about held together by the belief Herbert voices in his A Priest to the Temple, or, The Country Parson that affliction ultimately is beneficial because it ‘softens, and works the stubborn heart of man’ (1991, p. 225). One scholar comments that the poem is a remarkable record of ‘the achievement of maturity and of the inevitable pains of the process’ (Knights, 1946, p. 141).

He begins this prayer poem with what we might think of as the honeymoon with God and life. God entices his heart, and he, like someone happy to be serving a friendly new master, finds himself in a good place with naturall delights and gracious benefits. All the furniture of his faith seemed to fit, although the use of the word entwine suggests something of an entanglement that may later prove unhelpful. For now, though, it seemed that heaven and earth payd me my wages in ...