ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

SUBSTANCE AND STYLE IN GEORGE HERBERT
Although primarily a lyricist, a poet of “private ejaculations,” as the 1633 title
page suggests, Herbert was also probably the finest teller of stories in verse in
the seventeenth century. In “Redemption,” we understand exactly why Herbert
valued “stories and sayings” for their educative value: as memorial aids superior
to exhortation. 24 Long after we have forgotten the particular route—bizarre as it
is—that has brought this tenant farmer to Calvary, we will continue to
remember the reward of resolve because the plot and the final saying are so
completely punctuated: “Your suit is granted, said, & died.” In this drastically
foreshortened poem, there is no time for reflection by the speaker, no time to
pause in front of the crucifixion and to meditate, no time even for a reply.
Getting there then—and now—is what counts.
And, of course, we remember the final lyric of “The Church,” “Love [III]”:
not because it is last (getting there is only just a beginning) or even because,
coming after a sequence on the Four Last Things (“Death,” “Dooms-day,”
“Judgment,” and “Heaven”), it invites us to imagine the soul’s reception into
heaven, as astonishing as that action is; but because after so many abbreviated
exchanges between Christ and the various speakers in The Temple, exchanges
that have been rendered cryptically (as in “Redemption”) or correctively (as in
“Jordan [II]”) or as part of a formal dialogue that is theologically unsatisfying to
the speaker (“A Dialogue”), we are suddenly and finally treated to the fullest
representation in language of a dialogue that has always been at the desired
center of The Temple. In “Love [III],” the earlier “whispers” and “methoughts”
give way to table talk of the most profound order:
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sinne.
But quick-eye’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack’d any thing.
A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah my deare,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame:
My Deare, then I will serve.
You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
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