A Selection of Poems
by George Herbert

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 assign'd.

Now I in you without a body move,
Rising and falling with your wings;
We both together sweetly live and love,
Yet say sometimes, "God help poor kings."

Comfort, I'll die; for if you post from me,
Sure I shall do so, and much more;
But is I travel in your company,
You know the way to heaven's door.

Geo. Herbert.

Blest be the God of love,
Who gave me eyes, and light, and power this day
Both to be busy and to play;
But much more blest be God above,

Who gave me sight alone,
Which to Himself He did deny;
For when He sees my ways, I die:
But I have got His Son, and He hath none.

What have I brought Thee home
For this Thy love? Have I discharged the debt
Which this day's favour did beget?
I ran; but all I brought was foam.

Thy diet, care and cost
Do end in bubbles, balls of wind;
of wind to Thee whom I have cross'd,
but balls of wild-fire to my troubled mind.

Yet still Thou goest on,
and now with darkness closest weary eyes,
Saying to man, "It doth suffice:
Henceforth repose; your work is done."

Thus in Thy ebony-box
Thou dost enclose us, till the day
Put our amendment in our way
and give new wheels to our disorder'd clocks.

I muse which shows more love,
The day or night: that is the gale, this th' harbour;
That is Thy 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.

Geo. Herbert

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are Thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivell'd heart
Could have recover'd greenness? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root when they have blown;
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

These are Thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell
And up to heaven in an hour;
Making a chime of passing bell.
We say amiss
This or that is:
Thy word is all, if we could spell.

Oh, that I once past changing were,
Fast in Thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!
Many a spring I shoot up fair,
Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither;
Nor doth my flower
Want a spring-shower,
My sins and I joining together.

But while I grow in a straight line,
Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own,
Thy anger comes, and I decline.
What frost to that? what pole is not the zone
Where all things burn,
When Thou dost turn,
And the least frown of Thine is shown?

And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. O my only Light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom Thy tempests fall at night.

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.
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

Geo. Herbert

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 heaven and earth;

Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tower,
Reversèd 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.

Geo. Herbert