Love by George Herbert is another poem by this Christian metaphysical poet. “Love” (III) seems to be inspired by the Bible verse “God is love” (I John 4:8, 16). This previous post gave and linked to details of his life. Here is one of his more popular poems from his collection.”
Love (III)
By George Herbert
Love bade me welcome; Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.
“A guest,” I answered, “worthy to be here.”
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”
“Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.
So I did sit and eat.
Note how Herbert is able to make very good poetry while still being positive and gentle. So often the great plays and poems are tragedies and about tragic subjects. I think there is something Christian about redeeming tragedy.
Love by George Herbert, like all of the poems in “The Temple,” has a unique structure to the collection. It has three stanzas, though the content does not seem structured strictly on the stanzas. This is a flowing conversation back-and-forth between the author and Love (I John 4:16). The line lengths are 5 feet, 3 feet, repeated three times per stanza. Again, the feet are iambic (de-dum, de-dum), this is very popular in poetry especially from the Elizabethan time. The rhyme scheme is a b a’ b’ c c’. If we want to improve our poetry, looking at how the experts did it as one way.
Christian Poetry
