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AARON.
Holiness on the head;
Light and perfections on the breast;
Harmonious bells below, raising the dead,
To lead them unto life and rest--
Thus are true Aarons drest.
Profaneness in my head;
Defects and darkness in my breast;
- A
- noise of passions ringing me for dead
Unto a place where is no rest--
Poor priest, thus am I drest!
Only another head
I have, another heart and breast,
Another music, making live, not dead,
Without whom I could have no rest--
In him I am well drest.
Christ is my only head,
My alone only heart and breast,
My only music, striking me even dead,
That to the old man I may rest,
And be in him new drest.
So, holy in my head,
Perfect and light in my dear breast,
My doctrine turned by Christ, who is not dead,
- But
- lives in me while I do rest--
Come, people: Aaron's drest.
Note the flow and the ebb of the lines of each stanza--from six to eight
to ten syllables, and back through eight to six, the number of stanzas
corresponding to the number of lines in each; only the poem itself begins
with the ebb, and ends with a full spring-flow of energy. Note also the
perfect antithesis in their parts between the first and second stanzas,
and how the last line of the poem clenches the whole in revealing its
idea--that for the sake of which it was written. In a word, note the
unity.
Born in 1593, notwithstanding his exquisite art, he could not escape
being influenced by the faulty tendencies of his age, borne in upon his
youth by the example of his mother's friend, Dr. Donne. A man must be a
giant like Shakspere or Milton to cast off his age's faults. Indeed no
man has more of the "quips and cranks and wanton wiles" of the poetic
spirit of his time than George Herbert, but with this difference from the
rest of Dr. Donne's school, that such is the indwelling potency that it
causes even these to shine with a radiance such that we wish them still
to burn and not be consumed. His muse is seldom other than graceful, even
when her motions are grotesque, and he is always a gentleman, which
cannot be said of his master. We could not bear to part with his most
fantastic oddities, they are so interpenetrated with his genius as well
as his art.
In relation to the use he makes of these faulty forms, and to show that
even herein he has exercised a refraining judgment, though indeed
fancying he has quite discarded in only somewhat reforming it, I
recommend the study of two poems, each of which he calls Jordan, though
why I have not yet with certainty discovered.
It is possible that not many of his readers have observed the following
instances of the freakish in his rhyming art, which however result well.
When I say so, I would not be supposed to approve of the freak, but only
to acknowledge the success of the poet in his immediate intent. They are
related to a certain tendency to mechanical contrivance not seldom
associated with a love of art: it is art operating in the physical
understanding. In the poem called Home, every stanza is perfectly
finished till the last: in it, with an access of art or artfulness, he
destroys the rhyme. I shall not quarrel with my reader if he calls it the
latter, and regards it as art run to seed. And yet--and yet--I confess I
have a latent liking for the trick. I shall give one or two stanzas out
of the rather long poem, to lead up to the change in the last.
Come, Lord; my head doth burn, my heart is sick,
While thou dost ever, ever stay;
Thy long deferrings wound me to the quick;
My spirit gaspeth night and day.
O show thyself to me,
Or take me up to thee.
Nothing but drought and dearth, but bush and brake,
Which way soe'er I look I see:
Some may dream merrily, but when they wake
They dress themselves and come to thee.
O show thyself to me,
Or take me up to thee.
Come, dearest Lord, pass not this holy season,
My flesh and bones and joints do pray;
And even my verse, when by the rhyme and reason
- The
- word is stay,[100] says ever come.
O show thyself to me,
Or take me up to thee.
Balancing this, my second instance is of the converse. In all the stanzas
but the last, the last line in each hangs unrhymed: in the last the
rhyming is fulfilled. The poem is called Denial. I give only a part of
it.
When my devotions could not pierce
Thy silent ears,
Then was my heart broken as was my verse;
My breast was full of fears
And disorder.
O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue
To cry to thee,
- And
- then not hear it crying! All day long
My heart was in my knee:
But no hearing!
- Therefore
- my soul lay out of sight,
Untuned, unstrung;
My feeble spirit, unable to look right,
Like a nipt blossom, hung
Discontented.
O cheer and tune my heartless breast--
Defer no time;
That so thy favours granting my request,
They and my mind may chime,
And mend my rhyme.
It had been hardly worth the space to point out these, were not the
matter itself precious.
Before making further remark on George Herbert, let me present one of his
poems in which the oddity of the visual fancy is only equalled by the
beauty of the result.
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