Christian poets of the English Renaissance often wrote poems about the difficulty of writing poems. Four of George Herbert's poems illustrate this phenomenon. His "Deniall" employs images of discordant music to express the poet's frustration in trying to please a seemingly deaf God:

When my devotions could not pierce
Thy silent eares;
Then was my heart broken, as was my verse:
My breast was full of fears
And disorder: (1-5)

The image of the broken heart prompts a catalogue of images having to do with the broken body or the broken instrument. Among these are bent thoughts, numb knees, feeble tongue, and a soul untuned or unstrung. The speaker may be seen as a broken lute lying on the floor. At one point his heart is in his knee, leaving his breast hollow. Under the circumstances, such music as the poet can make is only discord, and Herbert underscores this fact with irregularities of scansion and rhyme, all of which are only resolved when God finally cooperates by inclining his ear:(n1)

O cheer and tune my heartlesse breast,
Deferre no time;
That so thy favours granting my request,
They and my minde may chime,
And mend my ryme. (26-30)

Both of Herbert's "Jordan" poems illustrate this same self-consciousness. "Jordan I" begins with a query, the source of which is Plato's Allegory of the Cave in book 5 of the Republic. The poet asks whether fiction is really necessary to art. Should Christian poets really be compelled to paint pictures of carpenters' chairs modeled after the original Chair? Cannot a Christian write honestly, without embellishment?

Who sayes that fictions onely and false hair
Become a verse? Is there in truth no beautie?
Is all good structure in a winding stair?
May no lines passe, except they do their dutie
Not to a true, but painted chair? (1-5)

The rhetorical question is whether religious verse must adhere to the same artistic principles as secular. These lines imply that a special dispensation must be allowed Christians. The questions of the second stanza continue in the same vein, this time confronting content more than form:

Is it no verse, except enchanted groves
And sudden arbours shadow course-spunne lines?
Must purling streams refresh a lovers loves?
Must all be vail'd, while he that reades, divines,
Catching the sense at two removes? (6-10)

Rhetorical questions again suggest that the language of metaphor, which veils the truth, should not be imposed upon ars sacra. Hence, metaphor, even language as metaphor, proves the Christian poet's bane. Having rejected the entire poetic tradition (including Plato) twice, it would seem that the poet is ready to commit himself to honest verse.

The final stanza of "Jordan I" betrays the speciousness of such arguments when the poet proceeds to imitate an imitation, even that of the literary pastoral. Having it both ways, Herbert will declare plainness while accomplishing something else:

Shepherds are honest people; let them sing:
Riddle who list, for me, and pull for Prime:
I envie no mans nightingale or spring:
Nor let them punish me with losse of rime,
             Who plainly say, My God, My King. (11-15)

As a pastor, Herbert is a plain shepherd; but as a poet, he must sing the shepherd's pastorals along conventional lines, even while he defies this tradition.

"Jordan II" progresses from a discussion of the Christian poet's inventions to his motives. The speaker begins by confessing past deceptions, that which should not be offered to God:

When first my lines of heav'nly joyes made mention,
Such was their lustre, they did so excell,
That I sought out quaint words, and trim invention;
My thoughts began to burnish, sprout, and swell,
Curling with metaphors a plain intention,
Decking the sense, as if it were to sell. (1-6)

Reversing the argument of "Jordan I," the poet admits that he has been seduced by tawdry tropes and embellishments to cover his "plain intention." Ostentation has cheapened his verse, "as if it were [meant] to sell." The second stanza is a diatribe on the poet himself, whose pretentiousness can only result in failure.

Thousands of notions in my brain did runne,
Off'ring their service, if I were not sped:
I often blotted what I had begunne;
This was not quick enough, and that was dead.
Nothing could seem too rich to clothe the sunne,
Much lesse those joyes which trample on his head.(7-12)

The speaker's attempts to "clothe the sunne [Son]," to add anything to the crown this Sun/Son already wears, seem ludicrous. Striving to do the impossible proves the poet's scribblings vain.

As flames do work and winde, when they ascend,
So did I weave my self into the sense.
But while I bustled, I might heare a friend
Whisper,  How wide is all this long pretence!
There is in love a sweetnesse readie penn'd:
Copie out onely that, and save expense.  (13-18)

His crisis is self-recognition, the fact that he has woven himself into the verse. This epiphany halts his frenzy, allowing him sufficient pause to hear the plain truth: that God needs not his silly decorations.

Herbert's poem, "A Wreath," is a sonnet of only twelve iambic pentameter lines--three quatrains rhyming abab, cdcd, baba. Herbert's choice of the English sonnet over the Italian, composed of octave and sestet, is important. The octave of the Italian sonnet often presents a problem followed by reflection, example, or solution in the sestet. The structure of the English sonnet, a series of three quatrains followed by a rhymed couplet, only permits abrupt closure, sometimes expressed as a resolution or a declaration of faith or principle. Though various aspects of a problem or situation can be explored in the three quatrains, the final couplet must contain the resolution. Herbert, however, has omitted these lines.

Designing an imperfect sonnet allows Herbert to create a perfect wreath. Because of the missing couplet, Herbert's poem resists closure. The rhyme scheme of the third quatrain binds form with sense, the final line rhyming with the first quatrain, weaves the wreath again.

A WREATHED garland of deserved praise,
Of praise deserved, unto thee I give,
I give to thee, who knowest all my wayes,
My crooked winding wayes, wherein I live,
Wherein I die, not live: for life is straight,
Straight as a line, and ever tends to thee,
To thee, who art more farre above deceit,
Then deceit seems above simplicitie.
Give me simplicitie, that I may live,
So live and like, that I may know, thy wayes,
Know them and practise them: then shall I give
For this poore wreath, give thee a crown of praise.

"[...] I give / [...] praise" of the last two lines throws the sense back to "[...] praise / [...] I give" of the first two lines. Herbert invites his reader to reaffirm the initial codes of "deserved praise" and "praise deserved." For he or she will have observed that what the poet confesses to be--a "poore wreath"--is really a representation of his life, a life he admits deserves little praise but one that he nonetheless wishes to become a "crown of praise."

Herbert weaves the concerns of "Jordan I," "Jordan II," and "Deniall" into this wreath, which has become a purified offering to his God. Sins that had emerged in the other poems, the poet's pride, waywardness and deceit, are here acknowledged and transformed to beauty as he weaves these confessions into his praise. Because the poet acknowledges his frailty, this crown contains no snake lurking among the fruits and flowers. By rhyming the last line of his sonnet with the first and weaving a perpetual round, Herbert offers his God a wreath that will never wilt.

(n1.) For a study of Herbert's metrical practice, see Arnold Stein, George Herbert's Lyrics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1968). Stein scrutinizes various components of Herbert's metrics, including stress, juncture (pause and transition betweens syllables), and phrasing (ways in which units of language are grouped together to answer various metrical and syntactical demands). Stein perceives the structure of sound itself to function as contributing to metaphor. Herbert's "Deniall" seems an excellent example of the pattern of sound suggesting a spiritual dilemma.

Herbert, George. The English Poems of George Herbert. Ed. C. A. Patrides. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.

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By Roberta Albrecht, Bronx, New York