Love by George Herbert

I’ve been thinking a lot about the odd marriage of love and truth that runs through the Bible. God is Love, but Jesus is the Truth. The Apostle Paul said we are to speak the truth in love.

I think the best testimony a Christian can give is to walk the razor edge between love and truth, which will show the world what God is all about.

That being said, I want to focus on love today by re-posting a short article from some years ago which is less my writing than it is the Renaissance poet George Herbert’s.

I don’t post poetry … ever, but next month apparently is poetry month, or something like that. So in preparation, I’m making an exception.

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.

Renaissance poet George Herbert

George Herbert lived during the Renaissance, making him a contemporary of John Donne, another poet I really like. Herbert was a Welsh-born Anglican priest, one who put his faith into his poetry.

In truth, the Renaissance writers as a group had a pretty good handle of what faith in God should look like.

Raised in England, Herbert went to Trinity College, Cambridge, became the Universiy’s Public Orator, and eventually spent a short time in Parliament. When he first entered Cambridge, he’d intended to go into the priesthood, and he returned to that pursuit in his early thirties.

After he was ordained, he took a job as rector of a small parish where he cared for his parishioners, preached, and wrote poetry. Never a healthy man, he died of TB in 1633, just a month before his fortieth birthday.

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

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

This post is a revised and expanded version of one that first appeared here in April 2011.