The land of spices; something understood

George Herbert may be the best practitioner of the religious lyric in the history of English poetry. That  is not, I think, a piece of hyperbole. He is particularly worth reading, not only for the intricate craftsmanship of  his lines and stanzas, but also for the way his art and life gathered, as it were, to a greatness. The record which  bears witness of his greatness is his only collection of poems, published by Nicholas Ferrar after Herbert’s death: The Temple. 

Let us begin with an examination of The Church Porch, the first section of The Temple. The whole  sequence is, more or less, a series of exhortations. Classical rhetorical structure demands this foundation, and  Herbert supplies it, leaving us a clue to its rhetorical significance by titling it twice: “Church Porch,” and  “Perirrhanterium” referring to what in the Latin Rite is called the “asperges,” the ritual sprinkling or washing in  holy water that the congregation undergoes traditionally at the beginning of Sunday Mass. Note the double  title: this sequence is a classical exordium, designed to grab our attention, that we may “Harken unto a Verser,  who may chance / Rhyme thee to good, and make a bait of pleasure.”  

Thus, this poem is the first step in a process of purification, which must climax in the ecstatic passion  and wedding feast of the Lamb. It is an interesting clue into Herbert’s sometimes-debated liturgical and  theological sympathies, and not the only one. The second title refers not only to a part of the eucharistic rite,  but an ancient one, whose practice stretches back before the advent of the Reformation, and the perpetual war  between ritualists and puritans that it occasioned within the Church of England. It is a Laudian dog-whistle.  But it is also, in a sense, a rhetorical sacramental; it purifies the reader, calling him to recall his sins and repent. In  a lesser sense, it imitates the sacrament by making real in the reader what it signifies on the printed page. This  sacramental aspect of Herbert’s poetry is also at work elsewhere in The Temple. We might be tempted to  consider this initial sequence as a mere fore-appendage of Herbert’s collection. The collection’s conceit of  church architecture does not consistently present itself throughout. But I would suggest that the conceit of this sequence, which presents the poems as a) spurs to private and liturgical devotion b) a preparation for a further  sacrifice, c) the purification and education of the catechumen who is not yet permitted into the church itself  actually anticipates the primary concerns of Herbert’s poetry; the sinner’s apprehension of grace, and constant  turning towards it, in a cyclical ascent that is at once repetitive and climactic.  

Repentance, in one form or another, is Herbert’s consistent theme. And it is this emphasis on  repentance that makes him a poet who is deeply concerned with the Mercy of God. Herbert’s God is a God who damns, or at least potentially one who could damn the Rev.’d George Herbert. His poem Sighs and Groans is  punctuated in a deeply pathetic way with his repeated cries for mercy: “O do not use me / after my sins. . . O do  not bruise me!” And each refrain brackets a quatrain enumerating his crimes against the almighty. Yet such  failings, despite their eternal consequences, are for Herbert the foundation of grace. This is not a new note in  Christian thought. But what is unique is that both Herbert’s aesthetic and spiritual concerns are based upon the  Pauline paradox of weakness and strength. Consider Easter Wings:  

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store, 
Though foolishly he lost the same, 
Decaying more and more, 
Till he became 
Most poore: 
With thee 
O let me rise 
As larks, harmoniously, 
And sing this day thy victories: 
Then shall the fall further the flight in me. 

My tender age in sorrow did beginne 
And still with sicknesses and shame. 
Thou didst so punish sinne, 
That I became 
Most thinne. 
With thee 
Let me combine, 
And feel thy victorie: 
For, if I imp my wing on thine, 
Affliction shall advance the flight in me. 

This is far from being a merely typographical pun. The sense of each line works together with its length and  rhyme to create a total whole of meaning, rooted in dogma. What is that meaning? Ultimately, the poem speaks  to both the weakness of the human material, and the mercy of its mysterious union with the person of Christ.  This mercy of the material is present also in The Pulley:  

WHEN God at first made man, 
Having a glasse of blessings standing by ; 
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can : 
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie, 
Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way ; 
Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure : 
When almost all was out, God made a stay, 
Perceiving that alone, of all his treasure, 
Rest in the bottome lay. 

For if I should (said he) 
Bestow this jewell also on my creature, 
He would adore my gifts in stead of me, 
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature : 
So both should losers be. 

  Yet let him keep the rest, 
But keep them with repining restlesnesse : 
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least, 
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse 
May tosse him to my breast. 

Herbert’s style is rich, intricate, and jeweled as the gifts bestowed by God; the first and last line of each stanza  reflect abundance and scarcity. Note also the contrapuntalism of the rhyme words in the 2nd and 4th lines: “pleasure/treasure” and “creature/nature” resolve into “restlessness/weariness,” but are enveloped in this last  stanza by syllabant beatitudes of “rest” and “breast.” Herbert’s parable shows the soul’s dissatisfaction with the  finite goods of this world; the “repining” that pervades even the blessings of this life; but its main thrust is that  the boundaries of this world’s finitude are precisely where the wave’s of infinity lap at our shores. Our divine  discontent is but the prelude to the vast contentment of heaven. Finally, we should notice that in this poem,  God lures man upwards towards him through a string of beautiful but ultimately unsatiating goods to Himself,  the true Good. It is the same schema of education that Herbert proposed at the door of The Temple: “Harken  unto a Verser, who may chance / Rhyme thee to good, and make a bait of pleasure.” 

But who, in brief, was Herbert? If any poet does, he benefits from all the right sort of press, and suffers  none of the usual detractions. Herbert was born in Wales, to a family that had been carefully cultivating their  wealth and relationship with the government for some three hundred years. It seems to have been a family of  nobly inclined, ambitious and powerful men. But little George’s father died only a little over three years after  Herbert was born, and he was left to be raised under the devoted care of his mother. He was one of the many  English literary masters to graduate from a grammar school, (much of his poetry would be written in Latin) and  wound up at Cambridge. 

Herbert seems to be one of those men who is not a saint simply because he has never been canonized,  (except by being included in the Church of England’s Kalender as the subject of an optional memorial in late  February.) Though The Country Parson was supposed by its author to be “a Mark to aim at: which also I will set  as high as I can, since hee shoots higher that threatens the Moon, then hee that aims at a Tree,1” there is little  evidence to suggest that he did not hit the mark, if Izaak Walton’s hagiography is not an utter falsehood. Like  the much more recent Richard Wilbur, his achievements as a poet find their taproot in his achievements as a  man of temperance. In fact, some of the criticisms facilely leveled at Wilbur could, by the facile, be thrown at the feet of Herbert. (The editor of a recent Penguin edition of Herbert’s complete works called Herbert an  “epicurean,” no doubt in the classic sense of the word. Only a writer caught in the bony grip of modernity’s  constant fascination with religious doubt and ‘authenticity’ could call the author of The Collaran epicurean.  Wilbur has likewise been accused of being a poet of mere surfaces.) It might be that there are some who have  little patience for an ordered and intricate poetic, or a holy and ordered life. 

But there is, despite the initial appearance of smooth continuity between one of Herbert’s poems and another, a  real development that occurred in his life and in consequence, in his poetry. Izzak Walton testifies to the  relationship between the two in his Life:  

. . . he did, with so sweet a humility as seemed to exalt  

him, bow down to Mr. Duncon, and with a thoughtful and  

contented look, say to him, "Sir, I pray deliver this little book  

to my dear brother Farrer, and tell him, he shall find in it a 

picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed  

betwixt 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. Desire him to read it; and then, if he can  

think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul:  

let it be made public; if not let him burn it; for I and it are less  

than the least of God’s mercies." Thus meanly did this  

humble man think of this excellent book, which now bears  

the name of "The Temple; or, Sacred Poems and Private  

Ejaculations;" of which Mr. Farrer would say, "There was in  

it the picture of a divine soul in every page: and that the whole  

book was such a harmony of holy passions, as would enrich  

the world with pleasure and piety." And it appears to have  

done so; for there have been more than twenty thousand of  

them sold since the first impression. 

Notice that while Herbert’s friends immediately construe his poetic work as a testament to his “holy passions”  and humility; Herbert views it as a record of conflict between God and himself, as Jacob wrestled with God.  Rather than a poet who merely arrives at consolation, weaving pious doilies as he goes, Herbert in fact speaks to  both the graces he has received, and his own reluctance to receive them. “The drama that unfolds throughout  The Temple, then, is a drama of a Christian coming to terms with Christ’s presence, or, rather, with the gift of  Christ’s presence.2” What Herbert had to wrestle with is less than clear, if Walton’s Life is accepted merely at  face value. T.S. Eliot’s late, brief study directs towards the commentary of F.E. Hutchinson, a fellow of All  Souls, Oxford. “Twice every day, Ferrar relates, Herbert said the offices in his humble little church and never  failed to have others to keep him company. Outside the church this once proud man, distant with his social  inferiors, became accessible to the humblest, made up differences between his parishioners, encouraged them in the  habit of reading, and befriended the needy. He summarizes his ideal of the Country Parson: 'Now love is his  business and aime.’3” (italics mine)  

This pride, Eliot informs us, arose in part because of the natural gifts of the Herbert family. Donne was  so impressed by Magdalen Herbert, George’s mother, that he penned The Autumnal in her honor. Eliot calls  her “a woman of literary tastes and of strong character and of exceptional gifts of mind as well as beauty and  charm.” Likewise, Herbert’s eldest brother is “ a man of abounding vitality;4” a sportsman, would-be diplomat  and world traveler, multilingual, a poet, philosopher, and eventually peer of the realm. Herbert, more inclined  to ague, fever, and consumption, nevertheless sought fame and renown as the appropriate outlet for his early noticed talents in scholarship. The post he sought was “The Oratorship, with its opportunities of approach  to the king and other influential persons, a stepping-stone to a career as a secretary of state.5” Likewise,  Herbert suggests that to be Orator is to occupy “'the finest place in the University', for he 'writes all the  University Letters, makes all the Orations, be it to King, Prince, or whatever comes to the University',  sits above the Proctors and enjoys 'such like Gaynesses, which will please a young man well'.6” Yet this  ambition was channeled, eventually, towards the pursuit of holiness. This choice of Herbert’s might be  represented by The Quidditie:  

My God, a verse is not a crown; 
No point of honor, or 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 demain. 

It is no office, art, or news; 
Nor the Exchange, or busie Hall; 
But it is that which while I use, 
I am with Thee, and Most take all. 

The last stanza speaks most clearly of the attitude Herbert eventually achieved towards his vocation.  Versification was a way to use his talents, and perhaps to continue his pastoral work beyond the grave, but it was  also prayer, and contemplation. Herein, I think, lies a certain danger in reading Herbert. His serenity, hard-won  in an age of death, exploration, religious conflict and dynastic struggle, is what we notice first in him, and it is all  too easy to stop there. The victory was his, but he would be the first to admit that he did not win it. His re appreciation by the English Romantics, such as Coleridge, has perhaps painted a sheen of dewy-eyed piety over  Herbert’s struggle against God, as it is more clearly revealed in poems like Discipline:  

Though I fail, I weep:  
Though I halt in pace,
Yet I creep 
To the throne of grace.  

Yet neither, I think, should we understand Herbert’s spirituality as utterly agonistic. His joy in his God is clear,  both as a motivation and as the reward for his struggles. There is another, final way in which both that struggle  and reward can be understood, and this requires us to consider another, final poem: Prayer.  

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. 

Notice that prayer is Herbert’s “Engine,” a term taken from medieval siege warfare, not against the Devil, but  against God. Yet it is also his defense, a “tower” against God himself. It also points us towards Herbert’s  theology of justification, which in this poem is indicated, but not explained. Here, he is writing with the intimateshort-hand of a practiced theologian. In the interest of explaining why God might need to be besieged,  The long version might run something like this: God the Father, revealed to Abraham and his descendants, the  children of Israel, a promise of salvation, and later, the Law of Moses. But as St. Paul writes: “the law entered,  that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:” In other words; God  has given the law to show man how short of His glory man has fallen, and thus to place man under  condemnation. But God has also sent Christ, the lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world. Hence,  one of the most powerful lines in the poem: “Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear.” God wounds and  punishes himself in Christ, and indeed gives himself over to men to be punished and pierced. As always with  Herbert, a wealth of theology is pressed and distilled into a brief space. Thus the condemnation of Father,  through the Old Law, is in paradoxical way reversed against God himself. And Christian prayer is thus a weapon  against condemnation; a weapon he has put in our hands.  

Those who are overly attached to a merely human understanding of God’s Love might object against this richly  sacramental, paradoxical, and deeply mystical language. Yet if anyone knew God’s love, surely it was Herbert.  Mingled equally within this same poem, we see both conflict, and prayer, which is “Softness, and peace, and joy,  and love, and bliss.” In this one poem we see the dialectic of grace at work in the soul: the warfare of repentance.  That “pilgrimage” is envisioned by Herbert as “God’s breath in man returning to his birth,” which immediately  followed by further delight in paradox; prayer as a journey upward towards God, as well as journey downward  into the depths of soul, as well as the depths of self-abasement. This same precise journey is also taken by God  within the poem. In fact, Herbert deliberately mingles God’s agency with our own throughout. The pleasurable  tension in the true-love knot of Christian faith is nowhere more palpable than here.  

Yet in the last line of the poem, prayer is finally described as “The land of spices; something understood.” Here,  prayer is both something here and elsewhere. It is something extrinsic and something within the soul. Is is both  something sensual and something intellectual. It has all the luxuriance and erotic frisson implicit in a “land of  spices,” and all the severe beauty and quiet satisfaction of “something understood.” Moreover, ever attentive to  the nature of Christian life, Herbert has summed up the fruit of prayer not only as an act of faith as something  unseen, but as something certain. That “something understood” points to not just to consolation, but to  contemplative knowledge of God’s truth in prayer. This is indeed “the soul in paraphrase.” Moreover, it is not  simply an achievement of literature but of life, if indeed there is ever really one without the other.  

Nicholas Ferrar, one of Herbert’s closest friends, has been mentioned twice in this essay without explanation.  He founded a lay community of monastic contemplatives after the fashion of Christendom’s first monasteries,  with himself and his family, at Little Gidding. This place of peace and holiness would be visited, as if on pilgrimage, by the martyr Charles I. After the death of its founder, the community continued for twenty years.  It would be visited later by T.S. Eliot, who immortalized it in Four Quartets. That poem, extremely popular in  its own day, is still often quoted in a fragmentary and sentimental fashion. I risk quoting it here in connection  with Herbert’s poetry. The elusive speaker of the Four Quartets, standing in the chapel at Little Gidding, says:  

“You are here to kneel / Where prayer has been valid.” Those particular words have been hard to put out ofmind as I read and re-read The Temple. They spoke to the fact that one so often finds oneself slipping into  praying the poems as one reads them, and then remembering that they are a testament to a spiritual struggle and  success that both are and are not one’s own. Much as in the Mass, one feels both a personal call to deeper unity  with Christ, at the same time as the formal, impersonal ritual contains and enables that personal connection; so  with Herbert. We read The Temple partaking of something outside ourselves; and yet become, or want to  become, more like the poems the more we read them.

1 Herbert, George, George Herbert: The Complete English Poems, Edited by John Tobin, Penguin Books, 1991

2 Martin, Michael, George Herbert and the Phenomenology of Grace, George Herbert Journal, Vol. 36, Numbers 1 & 2, Fall

2012 / Spring 2013.

3 Herbert, George, The Works of George Herbert, Edited with a Commentary by F.E. Hutchinson

4 Eliot, T.S. George Herbert, Longmans Green and Co, 1962

5 Herbert, George, The Works of George Herbert, Edited with a Commentary by F.E. Hutchinson

6 Herbert, George, The Works of George Herbert, Edited with a Commentary by F.E. Hutchinson