Christian Art | George Herbert | The Temple | The Church | Virtue
George Herbert | The Temple | The Church | Virtue
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridall of the earth and skie:
The dew shall weep thy fall to night;
For thou must die.
Sweet rose, whose hue angrie and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye:
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.
Sweet spring, full of sweet dayes and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie;
My musick shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.
Onely a sweet and vertuous soul,
Like season’d timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.
George Herbert | The Temple | The Church | Virtue
George Herbert’s ‘Virtue’ explores themes of mortality, impermanence, and spiritual endurance through a sequence of images drawn from the natural world. The poem juxtaposes transient beauty of nature with the enduring nature of a virtuous soul, reflecting a theological worldview centred on the Christian understanding of eternal life.
The poem is structured into four stanzas, each with a similar pattern of imagery and reflection. In the first three stanzas, Herbert offers symbols of temporal beauty—a day, a rose, and spring—and contrasts such beauty with inevitable demise. The fourth stanza shifts the focus to the virtuous soul, presenting this as the only entity capable of transcending mortality. This progression mirrors a spiritual journey from an acknowledgment of the fleeting nature of worldly things to an affirmation of the soul’s alignment with eternity.
The first stanza describes the day as ‘so cool, so calm, so bright’, emphasizing harmony and balance. The day is likened to ‘the bridall of the earth and skie’, an image suggesting unity and perfection. However, this celebration is interrupted by the refrain, ‘For thou must die,’ underscoring the inevitability of the day’s end. The mention of ‘dew’ weeping at nightfall introduces a sense of quiet mourning, reminding the reader of the fragility of all earthly experiences.
In the second stanza, Herbert turns to the rose, a symbol of beauty and vitality. The rose’s ‘hue, angrie and brave’ conveys its striking and commanding presence. Yet the assertion that ‘thy root is ever in its grave’ reveals the paradox of life and death coexisting. The rose’s beauty is fleeting, bound to the impermanence of its physical existence. Its appeal, like that of the day, is undercut by its mortality.
The third stanza expands the focus to spring, a season associated with renewal and abundance. Spring is described as ‘full of sweet dayes and roses’, a collection of delights compacted into a single ‘box’. Despite this richness, Herbert observes that even spring ‘hath its closes’, a term from music that signifies resolution or ending. The stanza reinforces the idea that even the most bountiful and joyful periods are finite, subject to the passage of time.
The final stanza introduces the virtues of the soul, presenting a contrast to the impermanence of nature. The virtuous soul is likened to ‘season’d timber’, a material that does not decay or weaken. Unlike the day, the rose, or spring, the soul endures beyond the destruction of the physical world. Herbert asserts that ‘though the whole world turn to coal’, the soul not only persists but ‘chiefly lives’. This suggests a spiritual resilience that aligns the soul with eternal life, transcending the limitations of earthly existence.
Herbert’s use of repetition, particularly the refrain ‘and thou must die’, reinforces the inevitability of mortality while creating a rhythm that ties the stanzas together. The repetition also prepares the reader for the poem’s resolution, in which the focus shifts from the transient to the eternal. The progression from temporal beauty to spiritual endurance reflects the Christian journey toward salvation, emphasizing lasting value of virtue over fleeting pleasures.
‘Virtue’ reflects a theological perspective on life and death. The poem invites the reader to contemplate the fleeting nature of worldly beauty while affirming the enduring power of the virtuous soul, grounded in its connection to the divine.
As Christians, we celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day, observed on December 25th each year. While the date of Jesus’ birth is not known, and is not in the Bible, the celebration of Christmas Day on December 25th has been a tradition since at least the 4th century. It is thought that the early Christian church may have chosen this date in order to co-opt the celebrations of the winter solstice and other pre-Christian holidays that were observed around this time of year [ … ]
On Tuesday, His Grace turns to the theme of Jesus’ hidden years. His Grace asks the students to consider questions concerning what really happened: ‘Who, for instance, was Joseph? Was he indeed a carpenter, or has Joseph’s true role in the society in which he lived been misconstrued and forgotten to us? Though it be a beautiful, simplifying image to grasp, which offers to us much that is of value in Catholic faith… ‘A wise elder, which carpenter could mean, or a great engineer, an architekton, which in the Greek does not mean carpenter. But carpenter in the Hebrew could mean a wise man…’ His Grace turns the pages of his Bible back and forth, as if to itemize the paucity of information. Then he says: ‘What I think I can say to you with confidence is that it is of profound significance that we simply don’t know what Jesus was doing for most of his earthly life. There are some very different possibilities. One idea cherished by the Church is that Jesus worked with his father Joseph as a carpenter. Another possibility is that Jesus lived and prayed and studied closely with John the Baptist. They were cousins, and very close, almost the same, in age. Luke’s Gospel tells us clearly that Jesus and John knew each other from within the womb before they were born. So there may have been something quite important happening there. You see, we don’t know – it is an impossible mystery to us – just how much Jesus had to learn. This is because, if Jesus knew everything, humanly speaking, even as a tiny baby, then how can we say he is fully human? We simply can’t probe too far into this mystery, but we can draw extraordinary truth and healing from this thought, which becomes of immense relevance in our own lives. Jesus came to know and to understand himself not merely as a son of God, but as God the Son, and so as self-identical with his Father. It is not an adoptive relationship. Jesus is God. Now so much is hidden here. But this is a great gift. If you think about it, how do we come to know that we are loved by God, that we have our relationship with God? What are we born with in here’ – his chest – ‘and what do we have to learn? This is to say, what is gifted to us by other Christians at our baptism? ‘Jesus must have studied, and experienced profound revelation about who and what he truly was, and, so it seems to be, these studies cannot have been confined to the Semitic world. But this is the important point: there is a hiddenness about all of this. No matter which schools and which sects our Lord might have encountered all these years, this to us is as a desert space. What this means is that we can enter into the hidden life of Jesus, and there we can discover our own being with God, our own sonship. Our own particular being loved by God can come to us, if we can enter within this great unknown – into this desert space, where we are loved by Jesus. I firmly believe that there may be a great Lenten mystery in this period of our Lord’s life.’ A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 1 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 2 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 3 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 4 | King James Audio Bible | KJV A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 5 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Holy Week | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 6
Jesus has told his disciples about the Passion to come for the third time, as they journey to Jerusalem, and still this grizzly series of events, of mockery, scourging and death, is quite beyond the disciples’ comprehension. It is a great testimony to the apostles’ honesty and humility that, in recounting the Gospel, they do not seek to conceal their early weaknesses; these men chosen by Jesus have yet to be transformed through grace, to become the great pillars of the Church. Now further weakness is recalled, as the disciples reveal their ambition to have a powerful and prestigious position when the Kingdom comes [ … ]
