Love by George Herbert

Yesterday a story about “tolerance” and today a poem about love. I don’t post poetry … ever, but I learned today that April is poetry month, or something like that. So I’m making an exception.

Renaissance poet George Herbert

And honestly, George Herbert is one of the poets I can say I really like. T. S. Elliot’s Christian poems too, though the ones he wrote before he was saved are depressingly powerful. I like Robert Frost too. See? I lean toward poems that aren’t so very poetic. 😉

But here’s one that is more like a hymn, I think.

George Herbert lived during the Renaissance, making him a contemporary of John Donne. He was an Anglican priest, one who put his faith in his writing, but he died of TB at the age of 40, only 3 years after taking his orders.

Anyway, here’s perhaps my favorite poem of all time.

Love

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 lack’d anything.

‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘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 marr’d 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.

– George Herbert