The poems that I will take my cue from in this essay are all from The Temple, written by George Herbert in 1624. I hope to be able to discuss the treatment of service and freedom in his poems, focusing in-depth on a few and try to get a connection between them. The reason for the rather short list of poems I am considering is that The Temple alone has a large amount of poems, and that is without going into those he wrote outside of it.
There has been a lot of literary criticism around George Herbert, and especially Temple. The title is said not to have been given by Herbert, but by Nicholas Ferrar, and should therefore not be taken into consideration. At a glance, Herbert’s Temple seems to be filled with an array of poems, from secular ones, to religious ones. And yet, if one takes the time to look into them, one can find the same themes running through them all. It is about being a part of God as well as serving God, and becoming a part of the family, if you’d like, of same-minded people. Christina Malcolmson says in her book George Herbert: A Literary Life that:
Stanley Fish proposed that Herbert develops his work according to a catechistical context: “the central action of the sequence is the growth of the reader-pupil into a living temple, but the living temple into which he grows already stands; it receives no addition from him, but incorporates him into membership.”
The interesting thing about Stanley Fish is that he is mostly known from his work with Milton. Milton and Herbert, while sharing a similar time, are very different religious poets. For Milton, God offered free will in his poetry, and yet Paradise Lost is a whole debate on the idea of free will versus God. For Herbert, God seems to be freedom, and serving God is achieving the highest reward known to man.
In The Collar, George Herbert writes about doubt and service, the idea of freedom as freedom versus the true freedom of servicing God. The title, the Collar, can refer to a Priest’s collar, but in truth I am unsure what sort of symbol Herbert wore in his later years. His portrait, the drawing of Herbert by Robert White, suggests a large white collar and a skullcap hat, but my knowledge of 17th Century clergy is somewhat limited. Also, the portrait was drawn in 1674, several years after Herbert’s death, and one can surmise that the clothing might have been a later fashion. While the poem was written before Herbert because a priest, it still shows the relationship expected by God. The collar might be physical, or it can be a mental restraint, something that God has issued to all men like moral. Regardless, the word collar refers to many things, including the collars wore by animals as a form of restraints, and in modern concepts, the idea of conservancy and oppression. The interesting thing with the title of the poem is that the word collar is not mentioned once in the poem. However, the idea of a cage is brought up, in the lines ‘Forsake thy cage/Thy rope of sands/ Which petty thoughts have made ’ give the idea of something as restraining as a dog’s collar. The poem speaks of freedom as something the speaker can’t grasp; he tries to escape, to go abroad, but in his anger he goes no where. The words ‘He that forebears/To suit and serve his need,/Deserves his load ’ are a powerful sentiment, a warning as much as anything else, that those that only serves himself will get what he deserves. The word ‘suit’ can have many meanings, from a legal suit with one having to present one’s case before God and be judged on it, to attend your lord, be he a King or God. The freedom spoken of in The Collar is brief, if nothing but a mere fantasy, since the ending cuts all hope for rebellion short. The idea of growing more ‘fierce and wild ’ is a stark contrast with the civilised manners expected in James I’s court. The rant that the person has started has led him to this, and it seems nothing can restrain him. In a brief moment, there is freedom in the poem, but the freedom is tainted by the lack of a Master. What seems to change is the ending. The Master steps forth, and the freedom that the speaker has is taken away, in the last two lines: ‘Me thoughts I heard one calling, Child;/And I replied, My Lord .’ The ending is an abrupt conclusion to the 34 lines, and enhances the idea of servitude. The Child/Lord confrontation hints more towards a man and God than a servant and a Master, and in the last line there is a sense of complete conservancy to the Lord figure.
The Priesthood is a strange contrast to The Collar. Rather than seeing service as a negative thing, it embraces service and especially service to God. It is also almost viewing the priesthood as something to be done after one has gotten life experience. The lines ‘Fain put thee on, exchanging my lay-sword/For that of th’ holy Word ’ shows the choice of the person, and entering the service of God. Rather interestingly, the lines that follow are perhaps a good indication of how the person feels. It is a servant who considers himself unworthy who has been offered this great opportunity to serve, and perhaps there is a greater freedom in serving God than there is in working for yourself. The lines ‘to wear thy habit, the severe attire/My slender compositions might consume,/I am both foul and brittle; much unfit/To deal in holy Writ ’ confirms it, and the habit of a clergyman was a sign of servitude to God. Many of Herbert’s poems show the extent a man can give himself to God and serve. The Priesthood continues with fifth stanza, where he puts in the level of commitment expected not just from a priest, but also from God to His servants:
But th’ holy men of God such vessels are,
As serve him up, who all the world commands:
When God vouchsafeth to become our fare,
Their hands convey him, who conveys their hands.
O what pure things, most pure must those things be,
Who bring my God to me!
There is a certain amount of freedom in it, perhaps the purest freedom possibly; serving your God and giving to the people. The line ‘who serve him up’ brings a forth the image of a servant serving food, and yet the following ‘who all the world commands’ contradicts the idea of servitude. It is instead a very forceful image, one of leadership. The clergymen become vessels of God, and both serve and command at the same time. The idea of the servant is shown later though, with the line ‘I throw me at his feet ’ that to me brings in the idea of the old courts. Throwing oneself at someone’s feet is an age-old show of servitude, of complete compliance. God takes the unworthy and give them a place of service and freedom, by taking place within them, as Herbert mentions in the lines earlier, with ‘Only, since God doth often vessels make/Of lowly matter for high uses meet ’. The poem concludes with the lines ‘In raising might, the poor do by submission/What pride by opposition ’, again enhancing the idea of servitude, submission, compliance to God. It might be a very stereotypical way of viewing Herbert, as someone who only serves God and doesn’t indulge in secular poetry. But the main theme of most of Herbert’s poems is God, and even when it is not mentioned, it is still what one expects from it. An example of this is the 3rd poem that he titled Love.
Love is interesting because it is one of Herbert’s poems where he does not mention God, and yet one can tell it is not written about a secular love. It also has a lot of similarities to a later poem, published in 1894, by Lord Alfred Douglas entitled ‘Two Loves’, where the speaker also has a conversation with love. Herbert’s ‘Love’ is poem that is a conversation, but the things that are expressed hints of a love between an almighty and forgiving God, and a person who thinks themselves tainted by the sins of the world. The first two lines says it all, with ‘Love bade me welcome: yet my soul grew back,/Guilty of dust and sin ’ says a lot about the state the person is in. There is also the idea of servitude; the I has to obey Love, and there is also a Lord involved. Love is the Lord, and the Lord is God. Throughout the poem, Love tries to convince the I that he is safe, that he is welcomed. The second stanza is dedicated to this, with the words:
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dead,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
In those lines, Love reveals itself as God. The answer of who made the eyes is simple: God created man. So through the dialogue, God is revealed and the man realises what has happened. He even offers with ‘My dear, then I will serve ’ to serve God and give up whatever he had when he came in, which was guilt and sin. He even says ‘let my shame/Go where it doth deserve ’ and pushes it away. The final offering made by Love is that he should sit and takes his meat, bringing forth the image of the Eucharist, with the bread being Christ’s body (meat). So is this a poem about becoming Christian? Or is it about becoming a clergyman, to turn away from the secular lifestyle and enter a new one as a clergyman of the Church of England? It’s difficult to say, but the poem offers an insight into the idea of becoming a part of something, of serving and being cleansed.
Another and very different poem is Repentance. The interesting thing about it is that it exactly what it is, a confession to God written as a poem. I think the interesting thing about it is the fact that it shows the side of Herbert that we all expect; religious, repentant and is servitude, and yet it also brings forth the freedom one gets after forgiveness, the spiritual uplift of all the sins being washed away. It starts addressing God as ‘Lord’, a usual thing in both poetry and literature, and goes through the act of confessing his sins to God, as well as to entreat Him for forgiveness. In the second stanza, there is a reference to everlasting life being cut short for mankind because of the fall of Adam, who was both a creation and a servant of God. While servitude is not mentioned in the poem, the relationship presented between the speaker and God is one of dominance and submission. The speaker submits himself to God’s will, knowing that he will one day join God. God, while silent, is empowered by the speaker’s submission and words of praise. God is very much in position of rebuking, as seen with line 24, which says that ‘When thou for sin rebukest man/Forthwith he waxeth woe and wan ’, referring to the sensation of disappointment when one has disobeyed. There is no freedom in the poem, and a clear example of how some of Herbert’s poems do not allow the possibility of freedom when one has disobeyed; the lack of freedom of the soul is the punishment for the sins, and only God can release you. The opposite is seen in Affliction(1), where the speaker’s servitude of God was freedom, and his disobedience his prison when he takes ill. The ideas of God as a healer, Master, judge, executioner and father are all joined by the single fact that these are all dominant roles. Whoever attaches himself to it is subservient to God, never equals, and it heightens the relationship that Herbert establishes in his poetry.
In conclusion, the idea of freedom and servitude in Herbert’s poetry is all about surrendering your life and yourself to God. Without that sacrifice, one cannot experience the full depths of human life and the spiritual journey one should go on. Through God, one experiences all the good of humanity and have a freedom of a clear conscience that is unrivalled by anything else. And a state of now serving God, of not being a subject of God leaves the person in its own prison. It is believed by some that the idea of Hell is not fire and brimstone, but simply of not being seen by God. In my opinion, this is something Herbert takes onboard as well as the classic sense of Hell; serving God is his release and freedom, not serving God is a personal Hell and the isolation one feels, the sickness that it causes, is a direct imitation of how your afterlife would be. Perhaps that is what is so unique about Herbert’s poetry, that the first impression of him is never what is actually written, but what we hear about him. It is a very patriarchal view of faith, but God, being a very masculine figure, leaves even men submissive since their own masculinity can never match such an omnipotent idea. It is all a very Jacobean/Caroline period attitude towards religion, one that seems to have lingered on for quite some time afterwards. And yet, Herbert separates himself from others by simply devoting himself to one thing and sticking by it. While he didn’t join the Priesthood until later, his poetry reflects a clear longing towards it, and perhaps it was the death of his King, James I, that finally convinced him. The Temple dates from 1624, and it was not until 1630 that Herbert entered the priesthood and yet one could easily assume that he wrote it when he was a clergyman. Perhaps it is this level of commitment that makes his poetry so powerful and meaningful even today, with his unique ideal of how one should serve one’s God, and gain freedom through it.
Bibliography:
Herbert, George, ‘The Complete English Poems’ (Penguin Books 1991)
Malcolmson, Cristina, ‘George Herbert: A Literary Life’ (Palgrave MacMillan 2004)
Author notes
I wrote this essay for my 17th Century Poetry class. To be honest, I wanted to have it out there because I struggled to find stuff about George Herbert.
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