A George Herbert Companion (Routledge Revivals)

Robert H. Ray

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138775855
• eBook ISBN: 9781317681885
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

First published in 1995, this title provides the reader with a compendium of useful information for any reader of George Herbert to have at hand. It includes key biographical information, situates the poetry in its historical and cultural context, and, where appropriate, explains theological concepts and traditions which have a direct bearing on the verse. The aim throughout is to enhance understanding and appreciation, without being exhaustive.

A George Herbert Companion will be of most use to general readers and undergraduate students coming to this poetry for the first time, and will interest students of Anglican Caroline theology and hymnology.

A HERBERT DICTIONARY

A

Abraham. See SARA(H).

Abroach. Adverb: in phrase “to set abroach”—to pierce and leave running, especially in speaking of puncturing a barrel or cask of liquor, wine.

Admire. Verb: (1) to wonder, marvel, or be surprised; (2) to view with wonder or surprise; (3) to look upon with pleasure or approval or affection.

Admit. Verb: (1) to allow to enter, to let in; (2) to permit or allow; (3) to acknowledge; (4) to accept as true, to concede as fact.

Affect. Verb: (1) to aspire to or seek to obtain, (2) to like or love, (3) to frequent or inhabit, (4) to influence or act upon.

Affection. Noun: (1) emotion or feeling; (2) passion; (3) disposition, inclination, mental tendency; (4) fondness; (5) biased feeling.

Affects the metaphysics. See METAPHYSICAL.

“Affliction (1).” Many scholars and critics feel that this poem is one of Herbert’s most autobiographical. The speaker (or Herbert) is attracted to serve God (simply as a creature of God from childhood or as a Christian). In the first stanza he pictures himself as one offered a position as a servant to God, and the “service” is appealing because it is quite attractive in its beauty and elegance (“BRAVE”). God seems a generous employer, seeking to better his servant’s welfare with “gracious benefits,” not just with physical enjoyments, of course, but with his grace and spiritual provisions. The analogy of the speaker as a servant or laborer in relation to God as a master or landowner recurs in Herbert’s poetry. The “furniture” and “household-stuff of the second stanza continue the analogy of a household servant to a master. These terms may be taken specifically to refer to the furnishings and trappings of God’s house, the church—i.e., the pews, altar, chalice, and other beautiful physical elements of the environment in which a Christian worshipper would serve or simply the accouterments in any vocation or calling in which he can serve God. The household-stuff is indeed “glorious,” in physical and worldly senses, but possibly also implying that these elements are means to lead to spiritual and heavenly glory. But the comment on counting “such stars” (line 11) suddenly expands the idea of God’s earthly house or place of vocational service into one encompassing the whole creation: the speaker is joyful to serve God in the creation itself, with its elements of beauty surrounding him. Continuing the servant and monetary analogy, the speaker receives his “wages,” then, in both the pleasures of God’s MACROCOSM and of his MICROCOSM on earth.

Stanza three pictures the rather naive and self-concerned speaker as ecstatic in his optimism contemplating his rosy future: he feels that he will never lack (WANT) any pleasures, since he will be able to serve the ultimate King and provider, God himself! But he has ignored the possibility of “grief or fear” in the life of a servant of God. His rash, hasty (see SUDDEN) soul briefly realizes these possible spoilers of the good life and brashly looks to God for some reassurance and encouragement. (One should note Herbert’s use of “her” in line 18 to refer to the soul: see SOUL, FEMININE.) Most of stanza four reinforces his naive nature—and indeed his pathetically childlike view of God’s first nurturing him like a mother with the very “milk and sweetnesses” he had earlier anticipated. His early life (as a human? as a Christian?) seemed a veritable eternal spring (“May”) with all the pleasures and beauties in life that he could wish. But “sorrow” intrudes with his accumulating years and begins to fight on the side of “woe” and against pleasure in life.

Stanza five presents the body (“flesh”) complaining to the soul: lines 26, 27, and 28 of the poem should be read as if quoting the body’s statements (its three complaints) to the soul. To understand this, one must remember the concept of the TRIPARTITE SOUL: the sensitive (or sensible) soul is responsible for the functioning of the five senses (and thus feeling and pain). “Grief and “fear” (stanza three) do now have a large part in his life.

Stanza six (the middle one of the poem) enforces the “affliction” of the poem’s title quite explicitly: the speaker is now suffering not just periods of fluctuating physical health and well-being (significantly quite typical of the sickly Herbert throughout his life), but periodic losses of emotional well-being and “life” through deaths of friends. Decline in his sense of humor and penetrating wit was “lost,” “blunted.” At this stage he felt physically weak and wasted (“thin and lean”) and emotionally isolated, unprotected, and unsupported (“without a fence or friend”). He was aware of being afflicted with the “storms and winds” of life and mortality.

Stanza seven has obvious reflections of, or at least parallels to, Herbert’s own life. His birth into a prominent family and some of his own initial desires might suggest an inclination toward a position in the government and/or court, but he instead became immersed in academic life, with “book” and academic “gown,” as a student, fellow, and University Orator at Cambridge. The troubles of the larger world were not excluded from the academic world, however. The “strife” inherent in humanity and the world impinge on him increasingly, as well as conflict felt within himself about his true goals and purposes in life. This imagery of conflict and battle carries into stanza eight with his wish to end the “siege” of God’s force pressuring him either (1) to serve God in his academic calling or (2) to serve God as a clergyman. God’s praises and the sweetnesses of Christian service keep him serving God. But the speaker discovers (stanza nine) that this new life of Christian service also has afflictions: he is not immune to earthly afflictions that all mortals are subject to, and God promises him no such immunity and no poetic justice for the good in this life. God turns (see “CROSSBIAS”) his direct, apparently simple path in life to an oblique, indirect one to reach his ultimate goal.

The last stanza pictures him settled into his service for God, but with uncertainty for its future course, with no simple assurances and predictions and no help from academic and theological scholarship (“None of my books will show”). His own uncertainty in being subject to flux and suffering, of course, is not unique in this world: in fact, it is the typical lot of mortal humanity in a fallen world, and this is what the speaker must learn. The speaker’s sense of frustration is conveyed well by line 57 of the poem (“I read, and sigh, and wish I were a tree”): the regular iambic meter with alternating short and long words corresponding to the short and long stresses give a sense of his life seeming to be one of weary impatience, of being suspended uselessly. To gain a sense of simple purpose and certainty, he makes his slightly sarcastic wish to be a tree that at least provides fruit, shade, and a nesting place and is not subject to the consciousness of misery as humans are.

He attempts to calm himself early in the final stanza by trying to convince himself that he must meekly and stoically bear any afflictions he is subject to and, paradoxically, also be “strong” in times of spiritual weakness that might cause him to stray from God’s service. Suddenly, as any inconstant mortal tends to do, he changes his mind and wants to go find another “service” for another “master,” throwing away his present way of life for something on the horizon that always seems better: the servant/master analogy begun in stanza one is thus brought full circle at the end of the poem. Suddenly in the last two lines the speaker seems shocked at himself to realize how fickle and disloyal and self-serving he has just been: he asks for the capacity to fully love and serve God and implies that if he cannot still love God even in the midst of affliction, then he does not really deserve to serve God (i.e., to serve because of his love). Herbert has made the last two lines capable of two interpretations, in fact, but both are relevant to the larger meaning of the poem. The ambiguity is in “I am clean forgot”: he can mean that he has completely forgotten God (and his debt and love to God) and/or he can mean that temporarily or at intervals (of affliction) that the speaker feels that God has forgotten him. In either case, his love and service to God should continue, and he should ideally be capable of transcending the changes and trials of this earthly life. His experience reflects in miniature, then, that of Job.

Afford. Verb: (1) to perform or accomplish, (2) to grant or bestow or give of what one has, (3) to be capable of yielding, (4) to supply from resources or to yield naturally.

“The Agony.” The title refers to the biblical event of Christ’s praying in agony by himself in the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives (see MOUNT OLIVET). The account in Luke says that his sweat was like great drops of blood falling. Immediately after praying, he was betrayed by Judas and arrested. These events led to his crucifixion.

The first stanza gives an expansive view of the accomplishments of “philosophers,” only to then satirically deride them because of the relative unimportance of their discoveries, compared to some in the spiritual realm. “Philosophers” here primarily designates natural philosophers, i.e., scientists, including astronomers, geographers, mathematicians, and others who have “measured” the physical world and universe from the top of the earth (“mountains”) to the bottom (“depths of seas”) and have even “walked with a staff to heaven.” This last statement plays on two meanings of “STAFF”: one is a measuring rod (thus, an astronomer’s means of measuring), and the other is a staff used as an aid in walking. By implying both, Herbert effectively conveys not only the scientists’ attempts to measure everything in the physical universe (distances of planets, etc.), but their extreme pride and presumption in doing so (or in thinking that they have done so). Walking to heaven conveys the scientists’ egotistical feeling of doing something apparently with ease and nonchalance that most mere mortals cannot conceive of doing. Geographers have measured mountains, seas, and traced “fountains” (springs and/or the sources of streams and rivers). Herbert does include, along with these scientists, “philosophers” in the sense of lovers of wisdom, applied to politics and statecraft (“states, and kings”), implying their pride also in this mastery of worldly and physical matters. (See PHILOSOPHY and NEW PHILOSOPHY.) Herbert must be playing on meanings of both “MEASURE” and “FATHOM” in these first three lines of the poem, and his wordplay creates further his satirical and critical tone. He implies that scientists feel that they have “measured,” in the sense of determined the size of mountains, but also feel that they have “measured” in the sense of correctly judged the value of these physical heights. Also, the scientists feel that they have “fathomed,” in the sense of measured the depth (i.e., sounded with a fathom-line) of seas, but also feel that they have “fathomed” in the sense of having understood the seas thoroughly. Of course, they only understand the land and sea of earth physically, not in any larger senses, and there are other matters much more important spiritually to be examined. And “fathomed the depths of,” applied to “states” and “kings” is clearly playing on “fathom” as understanding political systems, implying the shallowness of this knowledge when compared to matters of more importance. Thus, Herbert drives home common human limitations and ignorance in lines 4–6 by noting that Sin and Love remain unexamined: his satirical, critical tone depends largely on the continuing wordplay on “measure” in line 5: clearly here the emphasis is on the greater importance of judging the value of sin and love, in contrast to merely determining the physical size of mountains. Similarly, the wordplay on “fathom” is completed in line 6: to “sound” or “fathom” sin and love in the sense of understanding thoroughly their natures is in contrast to merely probing the physical depth of seas. One also notes Herbert’s careful variation of metrical stresses at a key point in line 4: “two,” “vast,” and the first syllable of “spacious” all are heavily stressed, violating the normal iambic pattern and slowing down the reading. The sense of stretching the syllables out conveys the impressive dominance in importance of the two elements he is about to name (Sin and Love), in comparison to the several lesser things that he has catalogued very rapidly in the first three lines. So, by the end of the first stanza, Herbert has punctured and deflated the ego of seemingly all-knowing “philosophers”: they think that they can range over the earth and universe and even walk to heaven very familiarly, but they only know “heaven” physically. To truly walk to heaven spiritually, one must understand sin and love, things that cannot be simply sized and quantified physically.

Herbert’s use of CLASSICAL form becomes evident in the ca...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Research in Herbert: Tools and Procedures
• A Herbert Chronology
• Herbert's Life
• Herbert's Works
• A Herbert Dictionary
• Selected Bibliography