Christian Art | George Herbert | The Temple | The Church | The Pearl
George Herbert | The Temple | The Church | The Pearl
I know the wayes of learning; both the head
And pipes that feed the presse, and make it runne;
What reason hath from nature borrowed,
Or of it self, like a good huswife, spunne
In laws and policie; what the starres conspire,
What willing nature speaks, what forc’d by fire;
Both th’ old discoveries, and the new-found seas,
The stock and surplus, cause and historie:
All these stand open, or I have the keyes:
Yet I love thee.
I know the wayes of honour, what maintains
The quick returns of courtesie and wit:
In vies of favours whether partie gains,
When glorie swells the heart, and moldeth it
To all expressions both of hand and eye,
Which on the world a true-love-knot may tie,
And bear the bundle, wheresoe’re it goes:
How many drammes of spirit there must be
To sell my life unto my friends or foes:
Yet I love thee.
I know the wayes of pleasure, the sweet strains,
The lullings and the relishes of it;
The propositions of hot bloud and brains;
What mirth and musick mean; what love and wit
Have done these twentie hundred yeares, and more:
I know the projects of unbridled store:
My stuffe is flesh, not brasse; my senses live,
And grumble oft, that they have more in me
Then he that curbs them, being but one to five:
Yet I love thee.
I know all these, and have them in my hand:
Therefore not sealed, but with open eyes
I flie to thee, and fully understand
Both the main sale, and the commodities;
And at what rate and price I have thy love;
With all the circumstances that may move:
Yet through the labyrinths, not my groveling wit,
But thy silk twist let down from heav’n to me,
Did both conduct and teach me, how by it
To climbe to thee.
George Herbert | The Temple | The Church | The Pearl
George Herbert’s poem reflects a spiritual reckoning with limitations of human pursuits in comparison to the inexhaustible worth of divine love. Herbert moves through an intricate meditation on human achievement—learning, honour, and pleasure—before affirming God as the ultimate object of devotion. The poem’s intellectual rigor and devotional focus are balanced by its reflective tone, and its structure underscores a process of realization: worldly endeavours, no matter how noble, ultimately fall short of the divine.
In the opening stanza, Herbert addresses the realm of learning. He claims mastery over human knowledge, from the natural sciences to philosophy and history: ‘I know the ways of learning; both the head / And pipes that feed the press.’ The ‘pipes’ suggest the mechanisms of intellectual dissemination, as if Herbert were privy to the very systems through which knowledge flows. The inclusion of ‘the stars conspire’ and ‘what forced by fire’ indicates familiarity with celestial and terrestrial phenomena alike. Yet the stanza ends with a profound concession: ‘Yet I love thee.’ This refrain, repeated throughout the poem, highlights the insufficiency of learning when placed beside the love of God. Herbert’s knowledge, vast as it is, does not provide the fulfilment he finds in divine communion.
The second stanza shifts focus to the domain of honour and social accomplishment. Herbert demonstrates an acute understanding of the social exchanges and emotional investments that sustain relationships: ‘How many drams of spirit there must be / To sell my life unto my friends or foes.’ The metaphor of selling underscores the transactional nature of social honour, reducing even profound acts of loyalty or sacrifice to exchanges measured in ‘spirit’. While such honour can bind people together, Herbert’s speaker identifies a tension within it. Honour, he suggests, relies on external validation, which pales in comparison to the self-sufficiency of divine love. The refrain—’Yet I love thee’—places this love as the central guiding force, one that supersedes the fleeting affirmations of worldly recognition.
The third stanza confronts the allure of sensory pleasure. Herbert acknowledges the depth of human appetites: ‘The lullings and the relishes of it; / The propositions of hot blood and brains.’ Herbert’s tone here is not dismissive but almost confessional, reflecting the vividness of earthly pleasure. By admitting that ‘my stuff is flesh, not brass; my senses live’, Herbert emphasizes the tension between spiritual aspiration and physical reality. This stanza is particularly resonant in its treatment of human weakness; Herbert does not claim to transcend his bodily nature but rather admits its limitations. Yet even as the body tempts and challenges, the refrain—’Yet I love thee’—reaffirms Herbert’s choice to prioritize God over ephemeral joys.
The final stanza moves beyond enumeration to resolution. Here, Herbert portrays his devotion to God as an informed, deliberate act: ‘Not sealed, but with open eyes.’ Herbert rejects the idea of blind faith, presenting love for God as a conscious, reasoned decision. The metaphor of the labyrinth conveys the complexity of navigating life’s challenges, but the image of ‘thy silk twist let down from heaven’ transforms the labyrinth from a place of entrapment to a path of divine guidance. This imagery highlights the role of grace, which ‘conduct[s] and teach[es]’ Herbert, making possible the ascent to God.
The poem’s refrain—’Yet I love thee’—grounds Herbert’s reflections, providing a unifying thread that weaves through each exploration of human endeavour. This repetition signals an unshakable commitment to God, even as Herbert grapples with the temptations and distractions of worldly pursuits. The balance Herbert achieves between acknowledging human frailty and affirming divine sufficiency is one of the poem’s most striking qualities. It is not Herbert’s accomplishments, knowledge, or strength that bring him to God but rather the recognition of his dependence on divine grace. This dependence is not passive; it requires the active choice to ‘climb to thee.’
In Herbert’s portrayal, divine love is not an abstraction but a concrete presence that reshapes Herbert’s understanding of all other pursuits. Learning, honour, and pleasure are not dismissed as unworthy but are placed in their proper context—as incomplete without God.
This section of Saint Cyprian’s treatise on the Lord’s Prayer turns our attention to the profoundly interconnected petitions: Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses. Cyprian interprets these lines not merely in material or moral terms, but through a rich theology centred on the Eucharist, sin, and salvation [ … ]
We process. Glass exhibition cases, old reliquaries. A forearm here; here a nun’s fingertip. In chapel, at a glance, there are the usual faces. But they all stand to attention. Jonathan breaks from the procession to – fire the organ with oomph and dignity: Ride on! ride on in majesty! The angel-squadrons of the sky look down with sad and wondering eyes to see the approaching sacrifice. When we’ve done the readings, the Arch holds that tree in his hands to deliver the homily. He rocks quietly on his feet, some few seconds, as if balance defeated it. A way you might affect as the Spirit moves… Copying. Then he says: ‘Our palm fronds may seem to us today rather dry. I mean this not in a literal sense, but by the standards of those who originally lined the roadways in order to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, as they proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, who would be clambering up and ripping their palm branches fresh from off the trees. I think perhaps also our faith is somewhat distant from that of the people there on that highroad into Jerusalem, and something of our sense of the meaning has shifted in vividness from what it was then. And of course the expectation of all those many people is markedly different, but in many important respects the same. There are the same essential qualities to all our faith in God, which springs complete from our humanity, and that is one and the same in value for all of us, and time is consistent on this point. So then, let us renew the fullness of Catholic faith, and let us ask the Lord’s blessing as we embark upon our Holy Week. ‘Our Lord enters into Jerusalem in order to refresh us. He is to die in order that we may have life. There is a living reality here, both spiritual and as entangled in the joy of our daily living. We have Ladies’ Day where I grew up. They still have it, and they close the roads off, and little children parade, dressed-up like spring brides. When I was a boy, there was a May Day festival, and there was a May pole on the field, with the people dancing, like Morris dancers might be one way of visualizing this if you’ve never seen it, with their ribbons tied onto the top of the May pole, and they would weave around each other, dressing the pole, which is what we called it. It was like a dance with red and white and blue ribbons all hung off of the top of the May pole, which stood there all year, only like a telegraph pole, but it was concreted in, and then there was a slide, and swings – one baby-swing and two you could have a go at – terrible health and safety but that’s what it was in those days. ‘There was a round-a-bout – we used to run it round and round to try to get it off its central axis. It were rusty as anything and creaked like mad – on concrete. And climb up where it was all greased up at the top. Ruth, who was big as the next four of us, used to sit there sucking on the lollipops we nicked for her from Raddies, and she’d direct matters. We were trying to destroy it, and get it to dislodge from its central axis, and fly away – roll off into that farmer’s field, which he only ever kept for silage, but we never succeeded. There was a car someone had left there so we spent forever smashing that up, until someone who lived in one of the houses there took exception to our doing that, so he put thick grease under the door handles and gave us a right talking to. ‘It would only be a few stands, hot-dogs and things like that. The man selling the hot dogs would have his records on full blast. There’d be a couple of set-up stalls. Air-rifles – that sort of thing. But we all had them, and we all went shooting, of course, if not with twelve bores then with smaller gauge. Or pay a pound – I have no idea how much it was in actual fact then – it might have only been a few pennies – and we’d get all that time smashing up the crockery the man would put up for us to smash on the dressers. That was my particular favourite thing to do at these festivals, by the way, in case you were wondering. You got a little bucket of so many cricket balls. ‘I dread to think what went into those hot dogs. Probably EE rules would forbid it now. But it was a fair mix in those days. A lot of young people then were C of E. We’ve done a lot to hang onto our young people, which is a tremendous encouragement when you consider how things are, while in recent decades the Church of England hasn’t been so successful. People still want it on feast days and what are essentially now civic celebrations. It’s strange to see, though, how all the little stands there people have are run by the police and people like that along those lines. There’s no May pole. That was a sort of faith that ran and ran beneath all the theoreticals of it in the 1960s and the 1970s and into the 1980s. The May pole isn’t there now in the particular place I’m thinking of. Considering May poles were officially suppressed hundreds of years ago – as a part of the protestant reformation. One or two of you are probably thinking I’m remembering things from that time! ‘I should have liked to say that those processionals were so hardwired into us, that even after the last thirty years, when I became a bishop, they are still with us. They were […]
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Psalm 34 expresses faith, gratitude and unwavering trust in the divine providence of the Lord. In the psalm, we encounter celebration of God’s goodness and a resounding call to praise God in all circumstances [ … ]
