Izaak Walton, author of The Compleat Angler, wrote a biography of Herbert and one of the stories Walton told is well known. When Herbert took up his duties in Bemerton he realized he needed a wife to share the work and the loneliness. But he had never had anything to do with women and was perplexed about how to find a wife. He did remember, however, that an older friend, also a clergyman, had had six young daughters whom Herbert had liked when he was young. He wrote the friend and told him he needed a wife and wondered if he—the friend—would choose one of his daughters (if any remained unmarried, Herbert added delicately) for him. In fact, all were as yet unmarried. The friend chose one (the second oldest) and sent her to Bemerton, where she shortly became Mrs. Herbert. The couple were said to have been extremely happy for the few years they had together before Herbert died.
In a letter that accompanied the manuscript of his poems, Herbert had described them as “a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed between God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus my Master, in whose service I have now found perfect freedom.” The description is accurate regarding the greatest of the poems in The Temple. They record a neverending struggle, fought in the silence of the heart and waged against the temptations of worldly ambition and of spiritual lassitude—accidie, or sloth. Herbert’s claim that he had finally triumphed in this struggle and had won “perfect freedom” may or may not have been true. The reader of his poems can decide for himself. Certainly they have the ring of sincerity; their power, which is great, derives from the strength of the feelings they describe and with which they deal.
George Herbert has often been likened to John Donne, with justice, but there are differences between them. Herbert wrote no passionate love poems like those of Donne, but on the other hand the intensity of his spiritual striving is probably even greater, and more affecting, than that of Donne. In short, there are hardly any greater religious poems in English than George Herbert’s.
These poems, therefore, are not to be read lightly. They demand attention and care, and a willingness of the heart. Give this to them, just the slightest bit, and they will lead you to give more of yourself. It is astonishing how they are able to draw even reluctant readers in. Read “The Collar,” “Love,” “The Pulley,” “The Flower,” “Denial,” and “Man.” Then read “Prayer,” “The Temper,” “Employment,” “Sighs and Groans,” “Whitsunday,” “The Star,” and “The Rose.” Finally, read “The Sacrifice,” with its heartbreaking refrain of Christ on the Cross: “Was ever grief like mine?” You must be strong to read this one.
Finally, read “Virtue,” which begins:
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky;
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die.
And think of that young poet who died so many years ago and who felt so deeply the loss of one day, as deeply as you feel the loss of any day of your own.
ROBERT HERRICK
1591–1664
Poems
Robert Herrick led an entirely uneventful life of little note. Born in London in 1591, but for most of his life a country parson, he seems to have gone down to London only once during the last half of his life, to arrange for the publication of the collection of poems he had been writing for many years. They were published, under the title Hesperides, or Noble Numbers, in 1648. It was not the best time for such a volume to appear. England had only recently been embroiled in a desperate civil war, which had ended with the ritual execution of the king, Charles I, and the mood of the time was passionate and serious, or passionately serious. Herrick was not serious at all, at least not like the Puritans who took over the government after the death of Charles, and his poems presumed the existence of readers who could enjoy pleasures of an older style, before politics had become so important. As a consequence hardly anybody bought or paid attention to his book. He returned home, wrote more poems, and may have licked his wounds—we know very little about him. Nearly two centuries later, in the early nineteenth century, the gentle critic Charles Lamb discovered a copy of Hesperides among some old books, read it, and began to tell everybody that this Herrick had been a great poet. As indeed he was.
Knowing that, and understanding why Herrick is a great poet, is not easy. Many readers, even relatively practiced readers of poetry, fail to see more in him than a graceful skill at describing minor country matters. But look deeper and you begin to recognize a profound melancholy, which is after all the stuff of much of the greatest poetry. At the same time that he is always light and graceful, Herrick struggles in his poems with the most important of poetic ideas: the fact that beautiful as the world is, it is not permanent, it will die. More than any other idea, that is the central one that poets understand and write about.
Both parts of the idea, or all four parts, in fact, are present in the best lyrics. First, that the world is beautiful. If you do not think so, you cannot be a poet, for all good poets share the belief in the exquisite loveliness, charm, and desirability of the world as it is—even though it is also bad and ugly in many respects. Now the beauty of the world is various, and poets have seen it from many points of view. Herrick saw it from the point of view of a country parson in the middle of the English civil war. He saw fields and meadows, flowers and young girls, children and old gnarled people. And he found them all good.
Second, that the world’s beauty is not permanent, that it must pass. The world is always changing, its beauty always diminishing—ever since that first morning when God made it perfect, long, long ago. Why does this beauty lessen? Well, there are various theories, having to do with original sin, entropy, and such concepts. Poets do not always bother their heads about the reason. They only know it is so.
Third, that this beauty will not only diminish, it will die. Every living thing that is beautiful in itself and adds to the sum total of the world’s beauty will die, sooner or later, and for most living things, very soon—like flowers and butterflies and this very day, which must come to an end tonight. “Everything” includes, of course, both the poet and the reader, who are conceived by the poet to be single: one-on-one is the essential poetical relationship, one writer, one reader, and the poem in between, holding them together with a grip that is firmer than death.
This is the fourth part of the idea: that despite the death of the world and its beauty this poem will endure, will survive both writer and reader and will help readers in other times and places to endure the melancholy facts of human life.
All of this is present in the best poems of Robert Herrick, which are not few, although his most valuable work is not vast, either. All of it is present in what may be his best poem, “To Meadows.” He addresses the meadows:
Ye have been fresh and green,
Ye have been filled with flowers;
And ye the walks have been
Where maids have spent their hours.