George Herbert, The Complete English Poems

GEORGE HERBERT

Perirrhanterium

1 - Rhyme thee to good, and make a bait of pleasure.

2 - How dare those eyes upon a Bible look,
Much less towards God, whose lust is all their book?

5 - Drink not the third glass,
… pour the shame
… upon the floor.

13 - Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie.

14 - Fly idleness, which yet thou canst not fly
By dressing, mistresssing, and compliment.
If those take up thy day, the sun will cry
Against thee: for his light was only lent.
God gave thy soul brave wings; put not those feathers
Into a bed, to sleep out all ill weathers.

22 - Look to thy mouth; diseases enter there.

30 - By no means run in debt: take thine own measure.
Who cannot live on twenty pound a year,
Cannot on forty: he’s a man of pleasure,
A kind of thing that’s for itself too dear.
The curious unthrift makes his cloth too wide,
And spares himself, but would his tailor chide.

34 - Dost lose? rise up: dost win? rise in that state.

38 - Wisdom picks friends; civility plays the rest.

41 - Wit’s an unruly engine, wildly striking
Sometimes a friend, sometimes the engineer.

51 - If thou be Master-gunner, spend not all
That thou canst speak, at once; but husband it,
And give men turns of speech: do not forestall
By lavishness thine own, and others’ wit,
As if thou mad’st thy will. A civil guest
Will no more talk all, than eat all the feast.

57 - Let thy mind still be bent, still plotting where,
And when, and how the business may be done.
Slackness breeds worms; but the sure traveler,
Though he alight sometimes, still goeth on.
Active and stirring spirits live alone.
Write on the others, Here lies such a one.

58 - Slight not the smallest loss, whether it be
In love or honour: take account of all;
Shine like the sun in every corner: see
Whether thy stock of credits swell or fall.
Who say, I care not, those I give for lost;
And to instruct them, ‘twill not quit the cost.

62 - Affect in things about thee cleanliness,
That all may gladly board thee, as a flower.
Slovens take up their stock of noisomeness
Beforehand, and anticipate their last hour.
Let thy mind’s sweetness have his operation
Upon thy body, clothes, and habitation.

65 - Restore to God his due in tithe and time:
A tithe purloined cankers the whole state.
Sundays observe: think when the bells do chime,
‘Tis angels’ music; therefore come not late.
God then deals blessings: If a king did so,
Who would not haste, nay give, to see the show?

67 - We all are but cold suitors; let us move
Where it is warmest. Leave thy six and seven;
Pray with the most: for where most pray, is heaven.

68 - Kneeling ne’er spoil’d silk stocking: quit thy state.

71 - Look to thy actions well:
For churches are either our heav’n or hell.

72 - Judge not the preacher; for he is thy Judge:
If thou mislike him, thou conceiv’st him not.

76 - since we shall be
Most surely judged, make thy accounts agree.

The Sacrifice

Therefore my soul melts, and my heart’s dear treasure
Drops blood (the only beads) my words to measure:
O let this cup pass, if it be thy pleasure:
Was ever grief like mine?

Curing all wounds, but mine

And a seditious murderer he was

They abuse me all


The Reprisal

O make me innocent

The Agony

Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the cross a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood; but I, as wine.

Good Friday

Or cannot leaves, but fruit, be sign
Of the true vine?

Holy Baptism (2)

O let me still
Write thee great God, and me a child:
Let me be soft and supple to thy will,
Small to myself, to others mild,
Behither ill.

Sin (1)

Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round?
Parents first season us: then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound
To rules of reason, holy messengers,
Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sins,
Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,
Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,
The sound of glory ringing in our ears:
Without, our shame; within, our consciences;
Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.
Yet all these fences and their whole array
One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.

Affliction (1)

Such stars I counted mine: both heav’n and earth
Paid me my wages in a world of mirth.

My days were strawed with flow’rs and happiness

…what thou wilt do with me
None of my books will show

Let me not love thee, if I love thee not

Repentance

Cut me not off for my most foul transgression:
I do confess
My foolishness;
My God, accept my confession

The Holy Communion

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

Love (1)

Wit fancies beauty, beauty raiseth wit:
The world is theirs; they two play out the game

The Temper (1)

O let me, when thy roof my soul hath hid,
O let me roost and nestle there:
Then of a sinner thou art rid,
And I of hope and fear

Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust,
They hands made both, and I am there

Employment (1)

If as a flower doth spread and die,
Thou wouldst extend me to some good

Whitsunday

Listen sweet Dove unto my song,
And spread thy golden wings in me;
Hatching my tender heart so long,
Till it get wing, and fly away with thee

Such glorious gifts thou didst bestow,
That th’ earth did like a heav’n appear:
The stars were coming down to know
If they might mend their wages, and serve here

Grace

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

Praise (1)

His arm is short; yet with a sling
He may do more

Sin (2)

O that I could a sin once see!
We paint the devil foul, yet he
Hath some good in him, all agree.
Sin is flat opposite to th’ Almighty, seeing
It wants the good of virtue, and of being.
/
But God more care of us hath had:
If apparitions make us sad,
By sight of sin we should grow mad.
Yet as in sleep we see foul death, and live:
So devils are our sins in perspective.

Evensong (1)

I muse, which shows more love,
The day or night: that is the gale, this th’ harbour;
That is the walk, and this the arbour;
Or that the garden, this the grove.
My God, thou art all love.
Not one poor minute ‘scapes thy breast,
But brings a favour from above;
And in this love, more than in bed, I rest.

Church-Monuments

…Mark here below
How tame these ashes are, how free from lust

Church Music

Sweetest of sweets, I thank you: when displeasure
Did through my body wound my mind,
You took me thence, and in your house of pleasure
A dainty lodging me assigned

The Church Floor

Mark you the floor? that square and speckled stone,
Which looks so firm and strong,
Is Patience:
/
And th’ other black and grave, wherewith each one
Is checkered all along,
Humility:
/
The gentle rising, which on either hand
Leads to the Choir above,
Is Confidence:
/
But the sweet cement, which in one sure band
Ties the whole frame, is Love
And Charity.
/
Hither sometimes Sin steals, and stains
The marble’s neat and curious veins:
But all is cleansed when the marble weeps.
Sometimes Death, puffing at the door,
Blows all the dust about the floor:
But while he thinks to spoil the room, he sweeps.
Blessed be the Architect, whose art
Could build so strong in a weak heart.

Content

Only the Chronicle is lost; and yet
Better by worms be all once spent,
Than to have hellish moths still gnaw and fret
Thy name in books, which may not rent.

The Quiddity

My God, a verse is not a crown,
No point of honour, or a gay suit,
No hawk, or banquet, or renown,
Nor a good sword, nor yet a lute:
/
It cannot vault, or dance, or play;
It never was in France or Spain;
Nor can it entertain the day
With a great stable or demesne:
/
It is no office, art, or news,
Nor the Exchange, or busy Hall;
But it is that which while I use
I am with thee, and Most take all.

Frailty

Lord, in my silence how do I despise
What upon trust
Is styled honour, riches, or fair eyes:
But is fair dust!
I surname them gilded clay,
Dear earth, fine grass, or hay;
In all, I think my foot doth ever tread
Upon their head.

The Star

First with thy fire-work burn to dust
Folly, and worse than folly, lust:
Then with thy light refine,
And make it shine:
/
So disengaged from sin and sickness,
Touch it with thy celestial quickness,
That it may hang and move
After thy love.

Sunday

…each beast his manger knows

Christmas

My soul’s a shepherd too; a lock it feeds
Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.
The pasture is thy word: the streams, thy grace
Enriching all the place.

Vanity (1)

The fleet Astronomer can bore,
And thread the spheres with his quick-piercing mind:
He views their stations, walks from door to door,
Surveys, as if he had designed
To make a purchase there: he sees their dances,
And knoweth long before,
Both their full-eyed aspects, and secret glances.

Lent

Welcome dear feast of Lent: who loves not thee,
He loves not Temperance, or Authority

Besides the cleanness of sweet abstinence,
Quick thoughts and motions at a small expense,
A face not fearing light:
Whereas in fullness there are sluttish fumes,
Sour exhalations, and dishonest rheums,
Revenging the delight.

Virtue

Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye:
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die

The Pearl. Matthew 13:45

I know the ways of pleasure, the sweet strains,
The lullings and the relishes of it;
The propositions of hot blood and brains;
What mirth and music mean; what love and wit
Have done these twenty hundred years, and more

Man

My God, I heard this day,
That none doth build a stately habitation,
But he that means to dwell therein.
What house more stately hath there been,
Or can be, than is Man? to whose creation
All things are in decay.
/
For Man is ev’ry thing,
And more: He is a tree, yet bears no fruit;
A beast, yet is, or should be more:
Reason and speech we only bring.
Parrots may thank us, if they are not mute,
They go upon the score.
/
Man is all symmetry,
Full of proportions, one limb to another,
And all to all the world besides:
Each part may call the farthest, brother:
For head with foot hath private amity,
And both with moons and tides.
/
Nothing hath got so far,
But Man hath caught and kept it, as his prey.
His eyes dismount the highest star:
His is in little all the sphere.
Herbs gladly cure our flesh; because that they
Find their acquaintance there.
/
For us the winds do blow,
The earth doth rest, heav’n move, and fountains flow.
Nothing we see, but means our good,
As our delight, or as our treasure:
The whole is, either our cupboard of food,
Or cabinet of pleasure.
/
The stars have us to bed;
Night draws the curtain, which the sun withdraws;
Music and light attend our head.
All things unto our flesh are kind
In their descent and being; to our mid
In their ascent and cause.
/
Each thing is full of duty:
Waters united are our navigation;
Distinguished, our habitation;
Below, our drink; above, our meat;
Both are our cleanliness. Hat one such beauty?
Then how are all things neat?
/
More servants wait on Man,
Than he’ll take notice of: in ev’ry path
He treats down that which doth befriend him,
When sickness makes him pale and wan.
O mighty love! Man is one world, and hath
Another to attend him.
/
Since then, my God, thou has
So brave a Palace built; O dwell in it,
That it may dwell with thee at last!
Till then, afford us so much wit;
That, as the world serves us, we may serve thee,
And both thy servants be.

Life

I made a posy, while the day ran by;
Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band.
But time did beckon the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away,
And withered in my hand.
/
My hand was next to them, and then my heart:
I took, without more thinking, in good part
Time’s gentle admonition:
Who did so sweetly death’s sad taste convey,
Making my mind to smell my fatal day;
Yet sug’ring the suspicion.
/
Farewell dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures.
I follow straight without complaints or grief,
Since if my scent be good, I care not, if
It be as short as yours.

Mortification

When boys go first to bed,
They step into their voluntary graves,
Sleep binds them fast; only their breath
Makes them not dead

Misery

Give him his dirt to wallow in all night

Jordan (2)

As flames do work and wind, when they ascend,
Do did I weave my self into the sense

Sion

And now thy Architecture meets with sin;
For all thy frame and fabric is within

Home

Nothing but drought and dearth, but bush and brake,
Which way soe’er I look, I see.
Some may dream merrily, but when they wake,
They dress themselves and come to thee.
O show thyself to me,
Or take me up to thee!

What have I left, that I should stay and groan?
The most of me to heav’n is fled:
My thoughts and joys are all packed up and gone

Business

Rivers run, and springs each one
Know their home, and get them gone:
Has thou tears, or hast thou none?

Providence

And put the pen alone into his hand,
And made him Secretary of thy praise.

Time

Christ’s coming hath made man thy debtor,
Since by thy cutting he grows better.
/
And in his blessing thou are blessed;
For where thou only wert before
An executioner at best

Gratefulness

Perpetual knockings at thy door,
Tears sullying thy transparent rooms,
Gift upon gift, much would have more,
And comes.

Not that thou has not still above
Much better tunes, than groans can make;
But that these country-airs thy love
Did take

Love Unknown

Who fain would have you be, new, tender, quick.

Divinity

As men, for fear the stars should sleep and nod,
And trip at night, have spheres supplied;
As if a star were duller than a clod,
Which knows his way without a guide

But all the doctrine, which he taught and gave,
Was clear as heav’n, from whence it came

The Family

What doth this noise of thoughts within my heart
As if they had a part?
What do these loud complaints and puling fears,
As if there were no rule or ears?

Than whom in waiting nothing seems more slow

The Size

Are passing brave

A Christian’s state and case
Is not a corpulent, but a thin and spare,
Yet active strength: whose long and bony face
Content and care
Do seem to equally divide,
Like a pretender, not a bride

The Holdfast

Shows not thy word
More attributes? Am I all throat or eye,
To weep or cry?
Have I no parts but those of grief?

The Discharge

The crop is his, for he hath sown

God chains the dog till night; wilt loose the chain,
And wake thy sorrow?

Either grief will not come: or if it must,
Do not forecast.
And while it cometh, it is almost past.

An Offering

Since my sadness
Into gladness
Lord thou dost convert,
O accept
What thou hast kept,
As thy due desert.

Longing

From thee all pity flows.
Mothers are kind, because thou art

The Collar

I will abroad

The Glimpse

Whither away delight?

Wert thou a wind or wave,
They quickly go and come with lesser crime:
Flowers look about, and die not in their prime

The Assurance

O spiteful bitter thought!
Bitterly spiteful thought!

The Priesthood

I am both foul and brittle; much unfit

But since those great ones, be they ne’er so great,
Come from the earth, from whence those vessels come;
So that at once feeder, dish, and meat
Have one beginning and one final sum:
I do not greatly wonder at the sight,
If earth in earth delight

The Cross

One ague dwelleth in my bones,
Another in my soul (the memory
What I would do for thee, if once my groans
Could be allowed for harmony) :
I am in all a weak disabled thing,
Save in the sight thereof, where strength doth sting

The Flower

Many a spring I shoot up fair

These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide:
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide

Dotage

Preferring, like brute beasts, a loathsome den
Before a court, ev’n that above so clear,
Where are no sorrows, but delights more true,
Than miseries are here!

The Answer

My comforts drop and melt away like snow:
I shake my head, and all the thoughts and ends,
Which my fierce youth did bandy, fall and flow
Like leaves about me: or like summer friends,
Flies of estates and sunshine. But to all,
Who think my eager, hot, and undertaking,
But in my prosecution slack and small;
As a young exhalation, newly waking,
Scorns his first bed of dirt, and means the sky;
But cooling by the way, grows pursy and slow,
And settling to a cloud, doth live and die
In that dark state of tears: to all, that so
Show me, and set me, I have one reply,
Which they that know the rest, know more than I.

The Water-Course

Thou who dost dwell and linger here below,
Since the condition of this world is frail,
Where of all plants afflictions soonest grow;
If troubles overtake thee, do not wail:
For who can look for less, that loveth
{Life/Strife.
But rather turn the pipe, and water’s course
To serve thy sins, and furnish thee with store
Of sov’reign tears, springing from true remorse:
That so in pureness thou mayst him adore,
Who gives to man, as he sees fit
{Salvation/Damnation.

The Twenty-third Psalm

The God of love my shepherd is,
And he that doth me feed:
While he is mine, and I am his,
What can I want or need?
/
He leads me to the tender grass,
Where I both feed and rest;
Then to the streams that gently pass:
In both have I the best.
/
Or if I stray, he doth convert
And bring my mind in frame:
And all this not for my desert,
But for his holy name.
/
Yea, in death’s shady black abode
Well may I walk, not fear:
For thou art with me; and thy rod
To guide, thy staff to bear.
/
Nay, thou dost make me sit and dine,
Ev’n in my enemies’ sight:
My head with oil, my cup with wine
Runs over day and night.
/
Surely thy sweet and wondrous love
Shall measure all my days’
And as it never shall remove,
So neither shall my praise.

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.

The Odour. 2 Corinithians 2

My master, shall I speak? O that to tee
My servant were a little so,
As flesh may be;
That these two words might creep and grow
To some degree of spiciness to thee!

The Foil

If we could see below
The sphere of virtue, and each shining grace
As plainly as that above doth show;
This were the better sky, the brighter place.

The Forerunners

The harbingers are come

Farewell sweet phrases, lovely metaphors.
But will ye leave me thus? When ye before
Of stews and brothels only knew the doors,
Then did I was you with my tears, and more,
Brought you to Church well dressed and clad:
My God must have my best, ev’n all I had.
/
Lovely enchanting language, sugar-cane,
Honey of roses, whither wilt thou fly?
Hath some fond lover ‘ticed thee to thy bane?
And wilt thou leave the Church, and love a sty?
Fie, thou wilt soil thy ‘broidered coat,
And hurt thyself, and him that sings the note.

A Parody

… leave me to my load

The Church Militant

The course was westward, that the sun might light
As well our understanding as our sight

Giving the Church a crown to keep her state,
And not go less than she had done of late

Ah, what a thing is man devoid of grace

What wretchedness can give him any room,
Whose house is foul, while he adores the broom?

The rather since his scattered jugglings were
United now in one both time and sphere

They have their period also and set times
Both for their virtuous actions and their crimes

Spain hath done one; when Arts perform the other,
The Church shall come, and Sin the Church shall smother