Here's a paper I wrote on George Herbert for my British lit class . . . if you feel the deep need for the works cited page, e-mail me through the comments e-mail address and I'll make sure I get it to you :)
“Inner Weather”: Tension and Resolution in George Herbert’s Poetry
Throughout his collection of religious poetry in The Temple, George Herbert creates profound works of universal yet deeply personal beauty and significance. Douglas Bush, in his English Literature in the Early Seventeenth Century, quotes Aldous Huxley in calling Herbert a poet of “inner weather”: Herbert’s poetry reflects his own spiritual conflicts through his “peculiar intimacy and honesty” (143). A fundamental, paradoxical balance between conflict and consolation marks many of Herbert’s poems, consistently revealing truths about the deeper spiritual tension and resolution in mankind’s experience with sin, suffering, and God’s grace. Through literal and symbolic imagery, figurative language, mood and tone, and defining themes, Herbert crafts poems of intricate structure, beauty, and meaning. Each skillfully progresses through a sense of disharmony that finally resolves itself—sometimes subtly and other times palpably. Evaluating several of his poems reveals the concrete and subtle techniques Herbert employs to create such a careful juxtaposition of tension and peace, which—by empowering his verse with a sense of life and emotional vigor—gains, in the end, true triumph.
Emotional power heightens the drama of conflict and peace in Herbert’s poem “Easter Wings,” particularly through its vivid imagery. As an emblem poem, its verse shape in the form of eagles’ wings gives it a concrete tangibility and conveys a feeling of wildness and vitality by its implication of eagles in flight. Moreover, the diction—both the denotative and connotative aspects of the words themselves—follows the falling and rising of the lines. Implicit in the visual imagery of “Easter Wings” is the idea of falling and flight. At the lowest point of both verses, the phrases “most poor” (line 5) and “most thin” (15) illustrate the actual level of the textual imagery as well as the spiritual state of the speaker. Ascending again, the picture of soaring eagles compares to the human spirit rising from the depths of self’s poverty and taking flight on the wings of God’s abundant grace. Through this combined visual and spatial imagery, Herbert reveals the conflict and discord of man’s “[decay]” (3), “sicknesses,” and “shame” (12) caused by sin—and then resolves it in the dramatic upward shift to victory. Yet at the end of both verses, this soaring spiritual flight results from apparently negative causes: the “fall” (10) and “affliction” (20). Thus even in the triumphant climax of each verse’s end, Herbert maintains the paradox of tension and peace as a surprising, empowering element in spiritual growth and ultimate victory.
Like “Easter Wings,” many of Herbert’s poems have abrupt, dramatic shifts of position at the end that bring varying levels of resolution—from mere balance or resignation to glorious triumph—out of conflict charged with life and emotion. According to Bush, “No writer has more [inner tension] than the man whose manuscript was ‘a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have past betwixt God and [Herbert’s] soul, before [he] could subject [his] to the will of Jesus . . . in whose service [Herbert] . . . found perfect freedom’” (142). Herbert’s poems reflect the tension and resolution of his mental, emotional, and spiritual life—all intimately involved in his relationship with God. Rooted in personal experience, he also voices universal themes of conflict. For example, in “Virtue” the balance of earthly sweetness yet inevitable mortality creates a sense of conflict in dissatisfaction with and dread of death’s ominous finality. But Herbert ends the poem by contrasting beauty’s mortality with the soul’s immortality, resolving the mood of loss in the great gain of the spirit, which “. . . though the whole world turn to coal, / Then chiefly lives” (lines 15-16). The simplicity and loftiness of Herbert’s triumph in “Virtue” is paralleled in many of his other poems. In such achievements of understated yet dramatic shifts in position and attitude, we seem to see a reflection of Herbert’s own spiritual experience: victory is achieved through divine empowerment—the key element in the depth, profundity, and finality of the poetry’s resolution.
In his poem “Denial,” Herbert primarily uses sound imagery, meter, and rhyme scheme to portray the dissonance of tension between man and God and the harmony of restored relationship. Herbert’s diction concentrates on the contrast between the cries and prayers of the speaker and the silence of God’s apparent aloofness. From “silent ears” (line 2) to the image of an “untuned, unstrung” (22) soul, the sound imagery implies a stony stillness or a sense of discord. These elements build the conflict by creating a barrier of silence and the problem of cacophony. Even Herbert’s meter seems discordant in its harsh abruptness, and the rhyme scheme of abab is broken with a fifth unrhymed line. Through the aural imagery of weeping, discord, and broken instruments, Herbert weaves a thread of tension as we seem to almost hear the unresolved chords of disharmony. From this he creates a sense of yearning for resolution—an emotional rapport with the speaker in a desire to find true music. As the final lines bring about Herbert’s trademark shift, beauty and music merge in profound—though quiet—reconciliation: God “[tunes]” the speaker’s “heartless breast” (26), and with the last line of the poem, Herbert finally “[mends his] rhyme” (30). He finds true harmony in the union of his will with God’s; as T. S. Eliot writes, “Herbert finds conclusion: In [God’s] will is our peace” (125).
In addition to the falling and rising of visual imagery and the discord and harmony of aural imagery, themes of disarray or turmoil replaced by order represent a significant manifestation of tension and resolution in Herbert’s poems. “Herbert’s main themes are those ‘two vast, spacious things . . . Sinne and Love,’” Bush writes (144). Almost always, the conflict in Herbert poetry is rooted in sin, the ultimate cause of disharmony—desecrating not only the relationship between God and man, but between man and man and between man and creation. Divine love, however, covers over a multitude of sins and brings about deeply satisfactory and often triumphant resolution—not through man’s effort, but through divine enabling.
Replacing the conflict of rebellion with the resolution of submission in “The Collar,” Herbert combines the themes of sin and love with vivid imagery to emphasize a profound spiritual paradox: true triumph comes only out of surrender. Herbert’s strong verbs (“I struck the board and cried . . .” [line 1]), description of emotion, and fitting metaphors emphasize a discontentment with life as a country pastor. Tense emotions of resentment and anger towards God and the parish reveal the conflict of self-will and divine will. Herbert creates a desolate word picture of painful toil, thorny soil, and no harvest, and then he contrasts it with the speaker’s contemplation of leaving—a wish for escape, freedom, and pleasure: “I will abroad” (2). But in the midst of his raving, one simple word from God breaks through his self-focused, defiant anger: the compelling call of “Child!” Suddenly the entire poem shifts dramatically as the speaker replies, “My Lord.” This acknowledgement of submission as a child to his father and as a servant to his master is not in any way a defeat. Rather, the subdued tone and plain words carry a weight of deep peace and restoration. Through God’s empowerment, the speaker gains the strength to submit and so wins victory over himself in the joy of sonship. According to Bush, the “unwonted violence of rebellion is real, but, artistically, the disorder is controlled: the picture of it is a tissue of ambiguities which are perceived as such only when they are resolved in the final ‘And I reply’d, My Lord’” (146).
Beyond the actual conflict of the subject matter of the poems, Herbert creates tension and resolution in his literary techniques as he juxtaposes unlike elements in a complementary unity, such as his wedding of grandeur and homeliness—a “fusion of intellect and sensibility” (Eliot 122). In “The Pulley,” the classical allusion to Pandora’s Box and the detached tone help create an elevated mood; but Herbert’s title brings the poem back to the technical, everyday elements of life—vividly tying together the lofty, almost mythological aura of the verses and the down-to-earth nature of the title in a satisfying unity. L.C. Knights writes that “it is the ‘things of everyday’ that Herbert’s poetry keeps consistently before us. . .instead of invoking a rather adventitious ‘charm of novelty’ or exciting ‘a feeling analogous to the supernatural,’ . . . he sees them in direct relation to a supernatural order in which he firmly believes” (352). Often, as in “The Collar,” the concrete and the ordinary help create an immediacy of tension—pulling us into Herbert’s emotions and dilemmas through plain yet descriptive words. Yet this same technique of using down-to-earth language produces some of Herbert’s most profound and triumphant endings, such as the final line of “The Collar.”
“Affliction (I)” contains less drama of heights and depths than some of Herbert’s poems, but it reveals a different approach to Herbert’s developed tension and ultimate shift to obtain true peace and consolation. Like “The Collar,” the speaker in “Affliction” finds discontentment in his clerical duties, yet he voices a calmer unrest. Through the series of trials and sufferings, he finds that God takes away every earthly thing he loves in a “strategy of reduction”—down to enjoyment of health and food (Harman 263). Eventually resentment and weariness culminate and, again as in “The Collar,” the speaker says he “will change the service, and go seek / Some other master out” (lines 63-64). Yet here the divine steps in and works a subtle yet definite victory: the speaker seems to awaken and realize his lukewarm, complaining inadequacy. “Ah, my dear God! though I am clean forgot, / Let me not love thee, if I love thee not” (65-66), he says in conclusion. We see his return to whole-hearted commitment, praying to put off a complacency of half measures and an apathetic faith.
Next to the complexity of “Affliction,” the straightforward sweetness of “Love (3)” makes the latter seem at first glance simplistic; but by weaving together many of his techniques of achieving tension and resolution, Herbert attains a profound beauty in this short poem. His imagery has a striking clarity about it that illumines each detail and makes the motives and emotions of the speaker almost transparent. Visual elements highlight the deeper spiritual conflict as the speaker, “guilty of dust and sin” (line 2), hesitates to enter and embrace Love’s urging offer. Homely, everyday descriptions and allusions heighten the conflict between the speaker’s perceived unworthiness and the personified Love’s welcome. For instance, Love first asks if the speaker “[lacks] anything”—imitating the traditional English innkeeper’s question of “What d’ye lack?” (Norton 1614).
Through the everyday language and the lucid imagery, Herbert voices weighty theology. Bush calls this poem an “‘emblem’ of the Eucharist or of the soul’s reception into heaven,” saying that “the dramatic contrast between humble human guilt and divine grace is active in the rhythm as well as in the words—on the one side hovering diffidence, on the other quick, all-powerful love” (145). In the final resolution, we see the mystery of Christ’s grace and redemption transforming a sinful man’s shortcomings to ultimate worthiness. With a simple act yet also a determined shift in spatial imagery, the speaker receives Love’s grace in the quiet triumph of the last line: “So I did sit and eat.” This culmination of simplicity and profundity in one action represents the victory of grace over a Christian’s perceived unworthiness and the final communion of man with God in the perfection of their restored relationship. T. S. Eliot writes that the poem “Love” “indicates the serenity finally attained” by Herbert—“this proud and humble man” (129).
Just as Herbert’s poems display a spiritual tension resolved in profound peace or triumph growing out of adversity, so also critics suggest that Herbert’s weaknesses—his paradoxical shortcomings of ambition and frustration with his inadequacy—“became the source of his greatest power, for the result was The Temple” (Eliot 122). Only through his own experience and God’s grace was Herbert able to create such poetry of spiritual tension resolved in divine empowerment and ultimate victory—culminating in this compilation of what might be called, as Joan Bennett writes, Herbert’s “spiritual autobiography” (353). Bound up in his poetry we find Herbert’s heart and soul: his poems give tongue to his “colloquies . . . with God or [his] self-communings,” and thus in their depth and honesty help fulfill a yearning in us to voice our spiritual conflicts and resolutions (Eliot 123). Through literary techniques, his own spiritual trials and experiences, and God’s enabling, Herbert weaves a tapestry of tension and triumph in his poetry of The Temple.