I.
While the affliction George Herbert experiences and on which he writes his largest sequence of poems may stem from resistance to submission, the source remains difficult to discern. Whether the speaker's anguish comes from God or owing to his own moral habits is a question raised in part by Herbert's positioning "Affliction" (I) immediately after "Sinne" (I). When the speaker of "Sinne" (I) considers the ways in which God has carefully guarded humankind, among those ways he lists "sorrow dogging sinne, / Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes" (5-6).1 However,the sonnet's final couplet depicts "One cunning-bosome-sinne" blasting all such protective barriers "quite away "and thus ascribes a force and dexterity to sin which stays with readers as they enter the "Affliction" poem—a poem in which God's "care" is considered once again, but this time in far less affectionate terms. Indeed, the ingenuity attributed to God in "A ffliction" (I) is reminiscent of that implied of sin before. In his endless abuse of the speaker, the Goof "Affliction" (I) dem onstrates a pow er and resourcefulness unparalleled elsewhere.
This alignment of God with sin immediately suggests a speaker who may be confusing the sources of his affliction. From the beginning of "Affliction" (I), the repetition of words suggesting beguilement implies the speaker has been tricked, but amidst this language of calculation looms a distorted view of what "service" to God entails. The speaker recalls:
When first thou didst entice to thee my heart,
I thought the service brave: So many joyes I writ down for my part,
Besides what I might have Out of my stock of naturall delights,
Augmented with thy gracious benefits. I looked on thy furniture so fine,
And made it fine to me: Thy glorious houshold-stuffe did me entwine,
And 'tice me unto thee. Such starres I counted mine: both heav'n and earth
Payd me my wages in a world of mirth (1-12).
With such emphasis on what the speaker stands to gain, one wonders who is serving whom. The speaker's acknow ledgem ent that he originally
Thy Rod and Staff: Affliction as Affection in George Herbert
41"thought the service brave," it soon becomes clear, refers not to any service he imagined might necessitate courage but rather to a service itself eclipsed by splendor. There is an extravagance assumed and cherished by the speaker. He recalls how "both h e a v 'n and earth / Payd me my wages/'Oblivious to the Pauline overtones of such a statement—that "the wages of sin are death"—the speaker suggests his service was directed at two masters rather than one, even as he implies that wages from each were owed(Romans 6:23).2Presumption dominates the entire stanza. For as much as the speaker adm its he considered G od's "fu rn itu re so fine," he nevertheless decided to improve upon it, just as the "furniture" and "glorious houshold-stuffe" that were God's he "counted" as his own.
Such stress on luxuries from "both heav'n and earth" anticipates the speaker's suffering:
What pleasures could I want, whose King I served?
Where joyes my fellows were. Thus argu'd into hopes, my thoughts reserved
No place for grief or fear. Therefore my sudden soul caught at the place,
And made her youth and fierceness seek thy face. At first thou gav'st me milk and sweetnesses;
I had my wish and way: My dayes were straw'd with flow'rs and happinesse;
There was no moneth but May. But with my yeares sorrow did twist and grow,
And made a partie unawares for wo (13-24).
After the acknowledgement that wages had been paid from heaven and earth alike, the sp eak er's assum ption that in serving the "King" of "pleasures" he served God seems dubious. While readers may be tempted to consider "milk and sweetnesses," and the dearth of grief and fear, as offshoots of service to God, the line "I had my wish and way" will not allow it.
The language suggesting victimization here remains present ("argu'd into," "caught"), but the syntactic constructions embedding them now make the agent of said action less discernible. When the speaker claims that he was "argu'd into hopes," as much as the speaker means to accuse God, the prodigious lump of prior calculations implicate the speaker as much as God. When the speaker asserts that "my sudden soul caught at the place," though "caught" recalls the ensnarement the speaker has been emphasizing, the speaker uses the verb in its active form, which may refer to eager acceptance, though its other meaning—to suddenly or greedily attempt to seize—reads equally appropriately. Moreover, while the speaker seems to have weighed several argum ents regarding his hopes for grandeur, he explains that he gave no consideration to potential grief or fears. Referring
to his soul's "youth and fiercenesse," he suggests a spiritual adolescence supporting his admission that "I had my wish and way.'Tndeed, the image of God providing him with "milk and sweetnesses" hints at perhaps an even earlier stage of development.
When the speaker describes the action of his sorrow (it "did twist") in language sim ilar to that in which he describes his ow n entrapm ent ("Thy...houshold-stuffe did me entwine"), he forwards his perspective that God's delightful wares have dissolved into misery. Where God ensnared the speaker with marvels, he now entangles him in suffering. But there is also the suggestion, albeit unrecognized by the speaker, that the relationship in fact turns in the speaker's favor, that the sorrow the speaker now finds so deplorable might in fact ultimately betray an illustriousness equal to or beyond that of the "houshold-stuffe."
In the stanzas that follow, the speaker expounds upon his grief, presenting the complaints of his "flesh" immediately. The thoroughgoing sorrow with which his soul responds is telling, for it suggests a relationship between flesh and soul that is perhaps fonder and more familiar than it ought to be. The speaker remembers:
My flesh began unto my soul in pain,
Sicknesses cleave my bones; Consuming agues dwell in ev'ry vein,
And tune my breath to grones. Sorrow was all my soul; I scarce beleeved,
Till grief did tell me roundly, that I lived. When I got health, thou took'st away my life,
And more; for my friends die: My mirth and edge was lost; a blunted knife
Was of more use then I. Thus thinne and lean without a fence or friend,
I was blown through with ev'ry storm and winde (25-36).
Inevitably these stanzas argue for the reinvestigation of words like "health" and "life" and where their significances lie. The alternate reading offered by line 25—that the soul rather than the flesh is in pain—suggests the speaker's affliction may have within it a restorative function the speaker urgently needs. When the flesh cries out that "agues dwell in ev'ry vein," Herbert invites readers to consider the possibility that sickness lies as much in every vein of the speaker's thought as in his body. What the speaker considers "health" may in fact be sickness and what he perceives as "life" may be death. As Romans 8:6 attests, "to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." That the speaker presents his suffering in unreservedly carnal terms ("flesh," "bones," "vein," "breath"), then, suggests a speaker whose life is just as one might expect—void of "life and peace."
Thy Rod and Staff: Affliction as Affection in George Herbert
43The duality of meaning conveyed in lines 25-28 insists that as much as the speaker perceives his sickness in negative terms—it is after all the perspective of the flesh given—that suffering carries positive resonances. When the flesh complains that "Sicknesses cleave my bones," the contranymic "cleave" anticipates the statement made by the speaker of "Repentance": that "Fractures well-cured make us stronger" (36). That the speaker's infirmities "tune" his "breath to groans" suggests similar mending, even as the speaker's "grones" recall those of the speaker of "Sion" where "grones are quick, and full of wings, / And all their motions upward" (21-22).The early days of bliss described by the speaker of "Affliction" (I) thus stand out ominously, particularly beside the declaration of "Businesse" that "If thou hast no sighs or grones, / Would thou hadst no flesh and bones!" (12-13).
The use of the passive voice and copula verbs in this latter stanza—"My mirth and edge was lost," "a blunted knife / Was of more use then I," "I was blown through"—accentuates the speaker's sense of powerlessness, particularly beside the active voice used immediately before when the speaker claims: "thou took'st away my life, / And more; for my friends die." However, the speaker begins this stanza by ascribing to himself the active voice when he says, "When I got health." Though the speaker may be mistaken about w hat constitutes "health," he is quick to attribute life's conditions to God so long as they involve pain.
In the stanzas th a t follow, the speaker retu rn s to allegations of fraudulence while ascribing to himself the eventual "power to change my life." Continuing to ascribe to God the active role w here treachery is involved, the speaker recounts that
Whereas my birth and spirit rather took
The way that takes the town; Thou didst betray me to a lingring book,
And wrap me in a gown. I was entangled in the world of strife,
Before I had the power to change my life. Yet, for I threatned oft the siege to raise,
Not simpring all mine age, Thou often didst with Academick praise
Melt and dissolve my rage, I took thy sweetned pill, till I came neare;
I could not go away, nor persevere (37-48).
As much as the "lingring book" and "gown" suggest an academic career— even H erbert's ow n—these images may have a source in the book of Revelation. For the "gown" the speaker considers academic may suggest the white robes of Revelation worn by those coming out of the "great tribulation" (Revelation 7:14), while the "book" and "sweetned pill" recall the angel with God's "little book" who commands John to "Take it, and eat
it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey" (Revelation 10:9). Certainly this description embodies the experience of the speaker in "Affliction" (I) who, before digesting the implications of service to God, enjoyed unadulterated "sweetnesses."
Continuing to articulate his position as servant in radically upside-down terms, the speaker recalls that he "threatned oft the siege to raise "but perceives God as apparently pacifying him to lure him near. He admits, "I came neare; / I could not go away, nor persevere." Though "I could not go aw ay" may appear positively charged, that charge is to some extent countered by the subsequent "nor persevere." Whether "persevere" refers to continuation in the direction of God or mere continuation where he stands, the speaker has stopped moving.
Perhaps in order to disrupt the speaker's "paralysis" or encourage the "siege," God afflicts—or allows the speaker's affliction to continue—further. The speaker observes:
Yet lest perchance I should too happie be
In my unhappinesse, Turning my purge to food, thou throwest me
Into more sicknesses. Thus doth thy power crosse-bias me, not making Thine own gift good, yet me from my wayes taking.
Now I am here, what thou wilt do with me
None of my books will show. I reade, and sigh, and wish I were a tree;
For sure then I should grow To fruit or shade: at least some bird would trust
Her houshold to me, and I should be just (49-60).
While the speaker concedes that God's actions had the effect of forcing him in a new direction, it seems the speaker has yet to perceive his "wayes" as leading to "unhappinesse." Indeed, one recalls the speaker's days when he had his "wish and way," and his more recent admission that his "birth and spirit rather took / The way that takes the town." That God's power "crosse- bias[es]" the speaker, then, suggests the redemptive undertones the stanza intimates throughout. For as much as the speaker feels this redirection as contrary and cruel, the stanza insinuates that "more sicknesses," or pills inducing the purging of undesirable elements, may have been necessary. In fact one can hardly read of the speaker's purge becoming food without recalling 2 Peter 2:22 where the author writes, "The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." With "Affliction" (I) coming shortly after "Holy Baptism" (II), and the poems between treating rebellion, the value of the speaker's condition wherein his purge becomes—or might become—his sustenance cannot be missed.
T hy R od and Staff: A ffliction as A ffection in G eorge H erbert 45
The emphasis on forced movement ("throwest," "crosse-bias," "taking") and transformation ("Turning," "making") resolves the stalemate of the previous stanza. By admitting that "Now I am here," the speaker indicates an altered position, but his activity in this new position recalls the paralysis hinted at earlier. Now the speaker simply reads and grieves, and hankers for a new existence altogether.
To wish that he were a tree, because "then I should grow / To fruit or shade," implies an anxiety over usefulness and recalls the speaker's earlier lament that a "blunted knife / Was of more use then I/'Articulating anew his disappointment over the future he once envisioned with God's "glorious houshold-stuffe," the speaker here points out that in the form of a tree "at least some bird would trust / Her houshold to me, and I should be just." This equation of justice w ith the fulfillm ent of one's due function, particularly beside the speaker's "book," may suggest a familiarity with Platonic philosophy.
Conspicuously the final stanza turns to G od's book. The speaker concludes:
Yet, though thou troublest me, I must be meek;
In weaknesse must be stout. Well, I will change the service, and go seek
Some other master out. Ah my deare God! though I am clean forgot,
Let me not love thee, if I love thee not (61-66).
Perhaps taking the Psalmist as his exemplar, the speaker acknowledges what is expected of him: he must be meek beside his troubles. As the Psalmist writes, "I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it" (Psalms 39:9). When the speaker admits that he "In weaknesse m ust be stout," however, one hears a discrepancy between his voice and the voice of the apostle Paul. For whereas Paul attests that "when I am weak, then am I strong," the speaker here recites the verse in terms of duty. Moreover, the preface to P au l's statem ent could not be further from the speaker's experience, for whereas Paul explains that "Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake," the speaker in "Affliction" (I) considers such hardship sufficient reason to "change the service" (2 Corinthians 12:10).
When the speaker says he will transfer his service to another, there is the suggestion not only that the speaker has been confused regarding whom he has been serving, but that in changing masters, he may be redirecting his devotion as he ought. The speaker's disorientation is further pronounced by the fact that within the same stanza he claims both that "thou troublest me" and that "I am clean forgot, "and then finally concludes the poem with the bewildering "Let me not love thee, if I love thee not."It seems God has not forgotten the speaker so much as the speaker has forgotten himself,
and indeed "though I am clean forgot" supports this reading, particularly given that the speaker announces his resignation only to immediately exclaim, "Ah my deare God!" The speaker's very insolence appears to trip him up. In turning to Scripture, albeit acridly, and in renouncing his service to God, the speaker's words ricochet back on him and he recoils.3
As much as the labyrinthine quality of such a line allows for a variety of readings, there may be something presumptuous in assuming humankind can even love God in the first place. For the speaker of "Dulness" more humbly asks that he "may but look towards thee: / Look onely; for to love thee, who can be, / What angel fit?" (25-28). And there is certainly something amiss in that the speaker's request of God ("Let me not love thee") hinges upon himself ("if I love thee not"). For again and again throughout The Tem ple, Flerbert emphasizes humankind's inability to move even one step in the direction of God without his grace first enabling us.
II.
When readers meet the speaker of "Affliction" (II), the images of life and death return with the mercantile vocabulary. But whereas the speaker of the first "Affliction" poem denounces God for depriving him of "life," the speaker here asks only that God not "Kill me ev'ry day." Significantly, the speaker addresses this request to the "Lord of life," suggesting that the speaker has begun processing the interconnected nature of life and death. The speaker urges:
Kill me not ev'ry day, Thou Lord of life; since thy one death for me
Is more then all my deaths can be, T h o u g h I in b ro k e n p a y Die over each houre of Methusalems stay (1-5).
Recalling the "book" of "Affliction" (I), the speaker here begins indexing his life beside Scripture. Not only does the speaker measure his time of suffering according to "Methusalems stay," he more importantly begins to juxtapose his own anguish beside Christ's. In fact, it is almost as though the speaker set on finding a new master at the end of "Affliction" (I) has done so in Christ, for while "Affliction" (I) depicts a merciless God reminiscent of the old covenant, "Affliction" (II) betrays a speaker softened by the grace of the new. Dispensing with the denunciatory tones of its earlier poem and adopting a stance of meekness, the speaker of the second "Affliction" poem is still, however, absorbed in computation. While the speaker of the first poem had tallied up prospective joys, the speaker here charts countless deaths. Doubtless, there is an improvement in that the speaker now makes payments rather than simply counts expected wages, but there may also be the indication that the speaker is now attempting to earn his salvation. For as much as the speaker concedes that Christ's payment exceeds his own, the following line marks a partial turn from that concession
Thy Rod and Staff: Affliction as Affection in George Herbert
47given the adversative it begins with ("Though I in broken pay / Die over each houre"). The speaker acknowledges that Christ's "one death" trumps his many in quality—the speaker's payment is after all "broken"—but in quantity the speaker still counts his deaths as more.
This calculating, of course, is as presumptuous and misguided as was that of the speaker in "Affliction" (I). For as the speaker of "Affliction" (III) will later recognize, "They who lament one cross, / Thou dying dayly, praise thee to thy losse" (17-18). As signified by the Eucharist, Christ's suffering is perpetuated by humankind's sins, so that the poem's opening— "Kill me not ev'ry day"—may register the Lord's plea as much as the speaker's.
The question of w hat constitutes the speaker's suffering is again raised. Is the speaker dying due to an alliance with the flesh, or is he honoring Christ by resisting that, dying to sin as 1 Peter 2:24 asserts he ought? The following stanza insists on that question when the speaker asks,
If all mens tears were let Into one common sewer, sea, and brine;
What were they all, compar'd to thine? Wherein if they were set, They would discolour thy most bloudy sweat (6-10).
There is som ething rem iniscent of "Sinne" (I) in the force ascribed to humankind's sinfulness here. For whereas Isaiah 1:18 asserts that "though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow," and John the Revelator observes those from the "great tribulation" having "washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (7:14), here the speaker imagines something of the reverse. Rather than Christ's blood cleansing humankind or its "tears," this stanza envisions "mens tears" as having the capacity to "discolour thy most bloudy sweat." The emphasis is placed on humankind's impurity rather than Christ's purity.
The image of humankind's tears in a "sewer" implies not simply their inadequacy but their polluted nature. That Christ's tears metamorphose into "bloudy sweat" mid-stanza, however, may hint at one possibility for why these tears could be so offensive. Whereas the grief ("tears") of Christ becomes "bloudy sweat," the tears of humankind often evolve into nothing more. Christ's tears spur him to action, to willing suffering and death on behalf of the speaker. While Christ's grief precipitates a resolve to endure affliction,
The Temple
frequently presents speakers for whom their affliction produces tears.After stressing the impurity of human tears, the poem concludes with a stanza that only further interrogates the nature of the speaker's grief. The speaker claims:
Thou art my grief alone, Thou Lord conceal it not: and as thou art
All my delight, so all my smart: Thy crosse took up in one, By way of imprest, all my future mone (11-15).
One wonders what it means for Christ to be the speaker's grief, whether Christ is the speaker's grief because he kills him "ev'ry day" or because Christ has suffered incomparable affliction himself and continues to do so. When the speaker attests that Christ is his grief "alone," the speaker may imply his suffering has its source solely in Christ, but in the aftermath of stanza two one can hardly rule out sin as a possible source as well. Granted, as the "Affliction" sequence ultimately shows, the distinction may prove irrelevant, for w hether sorrow comes directly from God or indirectly through sin, both types ultimately work for the speaker's good. There is even the suggestion that if Christ is not the speaker's sole grief, what the speaker means as a declarative statement—"Thou Lord conceal it not"— God will in fact hears an imperative.
What follows builds on these ambiguities, for when the speaker observes that "as thou art / All my delight, so all my smart," one recalls the speaker of "Affliction" (I) with his joys spanning heaven and earth. If Christ is the speaker's delight at all in "Affliction" (II), the poem makes no attempt to show it, so that in the speaker's claim—"Thou art my grief alone"—one hears also the disclosure that Christ is only grief to the speaker and not also joy. Of course if the speaker is finding his delight in places opposed to God, the line insinuates, he is finding his pain elsewhere as well. The pain may still be providential, but it is also self-inflicted.
T h e p e n u ltim a te line of th e p o e m ("T hy crosse to o k u p in o n e " ) reinforces these suggestions, for its placement immediately after "All my delight, so all my smart" suggests Christ bore both: the speaker's pleasures as well as his pain. In dying, Christ atones for the speaker's "delight," even as he anticipates and eclipses the speaker's "future mone." Finally, the speaker begins to sense the weight of Christ's suffering. Returning to the commercial imagery with which the poem began, he concedes that Christ's "imprest" cancels out, or at least renders negligible, his own paltry returns or "mone"—literally, his broken "money."
III.
When readers come to "Affliction" (III), they find a speaker who not only identifies God within his grief but who now finds comfort in that identification. No longer ruled by the narrow perspective of "Affliction" (I), the speaker here processes his pain within greater dimensions. He recalls:
My heart did heave, and there came forth, O God! By that I knew that thou wast in the grief,
Thy Rod and Staff: A ffliction as Affection in George Herbert
49To guide and govern it to my relief, Making a scepter of the rod:
Hadst thou not had thy part, Sure the unruly sigh had broke my heart (1-6).
Moving beyond the restrictive view that his affliction designates God solely as punisher ("rod"), the speaker retropes his suffering ("Making a scepter of the rod") to contain the heterogeneity he now glimpses regarding God's role in his affliction. He understands that God not only allows or endorses his affliction but also oversees, controls, and eventually moderates it. Yet the "relief" the speaker awaits may not be the relief God will extend. Whereas the speaker may still be anticipating a relief signified by the absence of suffering on earth, the rod of line 4 recalls the biblical notion that "He th at spareth the rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes" (Proverbs 13:24). The "relief" in store for the speaker may be eternal rather than temporal.4
The speaker's distinguishing between "scepter" and "rod" may be similarly amiss. For while the speaker uses "rod" to represent affliction and "scepter" to emblematize God's sovereign and benevolent direction over that affliction, these tropes in and of themselves convey a range of meanings that overlap and converge. The "rod" which marks adversity at the same time may be carried as a scepter, used to aid in walking, or serve as shepherd's staff, while the "scepter" which might indicate authority can likewise be wielded as protective rod or support one like a staff. In fact the very etymology of "scepter" zeroes in on this supportive function, the Greek crKf|7TTQov deriving from the root oxf] 7iT£cr0ai, which m eans to support oneself or lean on. The speaker's sense that God was "Making a scepter of the rod," then, may suggest a transformation in the speaker's perspective more than any regarding instruments.
As so often in Herbert, the line suggests what the speaker has yet to recognize. Where the speaker would distinguish an instrument of correction from one of guidance, Scripture insists the two correspond and work as one. As the psalmist affirms, "thy rod
and
thy staff they comfort me" (Psalms 23:4) (emphasis mine). Though the speaker experiences God's "rod" as harsh and disciplinary, it safeguards the speaker, deterring him from that which would truly endanger him so that he may take comfort in it and rest upon it as the Greekskeptron
suggests.5The "rod" and "part" of this first stanza registers this attentiveness of God, even as it gestures to Moses' rod parting the Red Sea, perhaps anticipating the admission in "The Starre"—the following poem—that Christ "dy'd to part / Sinne and my heart" (23-24). By allowing the speaker to suffer, God se p a ra te s th e sp ea k e r's h e art from th a t w hich w o u ld compromise and imperil it, and by doing so, attends to his health. For the opening action of "Affliction" (III)—"My heart did heave"—recalls the "purge" and "pill" of "Affliction" (I). The speaker is still undergoing
rehabilitation.6 One hearkens back to the speaker's claim in "Affliction"(II) that "Thou art my grief alone," and "as thou art / All my delight, so all my smart" when the speaker here must "heave" in order to recognize God "wast in the grief" at all. Moreover, the speaker acknowledges that "Hadst thou not had thy part, / Sure the unruly sigh had broke my heart."God may be in the speaker's grief but he is still just a "part."
By describing his sigh as "unruly," the speaker refers to the forceful turbulence of his grief. But this descriptor also implies the insubordination rife throughout
The Temple.
As the modifier suggests, the speaker's sigh may be a product of spiritual waywardness. A certain myopia is furthermore suggested given that the speaker attributes his unbroken heart to God's intervention. For as the psalmist attests, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit" (Psalms 51:17). If God were the whole of the speaker's suffering, his heart might indeed be broken. As the speaker of "Giddinesse" begs and confesses, "Lord, mend or rather make us: one creation / Will not suffice our turn" (25-26).The speaker of "Affliction" (III), however, still cherishing a heart unbroken, laments the sighs he imagines reducing his life span. Yet he continues fine-tuning his conceptualization of life, death, and suffering, for he revises his lament mid-stanza to incorporate the truth that in death, he will meet with God. He admits:
But since thy breath gave me both life and shape, Thou knowst my tallies; and when there's assign'd So much breath to a sigh, what's then behinde?
Or if some yeares with it escape, The sigh then onely is
A g ale to b rin g m e so o n er to m y b lisse (7-12).
The speaker's considerations still involve literal concepts. He envisions physical death leading him literally to God, when the spiritual reality is that his figurative deaths connect him with Christ spiritually in the present. The stanza furthermore affirms that the speaker's excessive exhalation is not even his own so much as it is "thy breath." Through the speaker, Christ himself suffers, sighs, and dies, whether because of the sins of humankind or through their commemoratory crucifying of "the flesh with the affections and lusts" (Galatians 5:24).
While the speaker's revision comes very near to the apostle Paul's admission—"For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain"—there is still the suggestion, perhaps flagged by the "escape" in line 10, that the speaker may yet be dodging the deaths he ought to embrace (Philippians 1:21). For while the apostle Peter asserts that "For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps," the speaker here continues finding consolation not within his suffering but in the prospect of its termination (1 Peter 2:21). Indeed, as
Tin/ R od mu1 Staff: A ffliction as A ffection in G eorge H erbert 51
much as "tallies" appears to refer to the speaker's breaths, it perpetuates the mercantile language found in the "Affliction" poems prior, conjuring up notions of payment, debts, accounts, and even squared rods of wood on which horizontal lines were traditionally etched to document such sums. Thus, Herbert packs into a single word the misguided bookkeeping of the earlier "Affliction" poems, the speaker's outstanding debt beside Christ's payment, and the reminder that "every one of us shall give account of himself to God"—all this within a word which itself embodies a cruciform "shape" (Romans 14:12).
By asking "when there's assign'd / So much breath to a sigh, what's then behinde?" the speaker furthers his commercial discourse, even as he invites suspicion regarding the source "behinde" such agony, particularly in the wake of stating "Thou knowst my tallies." Again one recalls the "unruly sigh," the speaker's unbroken heart, and the suggestion that Christ's presence in the speaker's grief is limited. As much as this poem may be the "climax" of a "five-act drama," its placement in the "Affliction" series also rem inds us that the speaker is only halfw ay there as far as grasping and internalizing the true balance of these transactions (Van Nuis 7).
Shifting the focus from his own suffering to that of Christ, the speaker seems to recognize that whereas his own physical death will take him to his "blisse," C hrist's suffering extends beyond corporeal dissolution. He acknowledges that:
Thy life on earth was grief, and thou art still Constant unto it, making it to be
A point of honour, now to grieve in me, And in thy members suffer ill.
They who lament one crosse,
Thou dying dayly, praise thee to thy losse (13-18).
The use of words like "still" and "Constant" to describe Christ's affliction stands out beside the speaker's agitated emphasis on "escape" and "relief." In fact the very poem preceding "Affliction" (III), "Constancie," characterizes "the honest man" as one "Who, when great trials come, / Nor seeks, nor shunnes them; but doth calmly stay" (ll-12).The speaker of "Affliction" (III), by contrast, depicts himself as the foil, for he characterizes his own response to tribulation not in terms of calmness or stability but rather as a "gale"—which moreover moves him.
It may be similarly problematic that the speaker calls it "A point of honour, now to grieve in me," for the emphasis appears to be on the honor God gleans through the speaker's suffering. But if Christ is glorified through the speaker's grief, how much more should the speaker feel honored to "suffer for his sake"(Philippians 1:29)? Once more the question arises as to w hat this grief involves, whether "to grieve in me" signals God's pain
because of the speaker's sin or whether it speaks to the fellowship created when the speaker suffers some of the agony Christ has borne.
Rather than clarifying these ambiguities, the following line perpetuates them, for the speaker represents God's grief alongside "And in thy members suffer ill," so that as much as "in thy members suffer ill" may refer to a solidarity of experience between Christ and his followers, it may equally point to the pain inflicted by those "members." The closing lines of the poem likewise occasion distinct readings: for while those who "lament one crosse" may be like the speaker of "Affliction" (II), despairing over the "one crosse" of Christ—blind to the reality that Christ continues "dying dayly"—they may also be those who lament their own "crosse" rather than Christ's many. In either case, such lamentation would, indeed, "praise thee to thy losse." For the grief most worthy of Christ concentrates on him and his own continued affliction.
IV.
The double implications of so many lines relates largely to the speaker's position, a position often elaborated upon in The Temple. No longer "of this world" though still physically occupying it, not yet within God's kingdom though spiritually reaching toward it, the speaker finds himself in distress (John 18:36). Recalling the unbroken heart of "Affliction" (III), the speaker of "Affliction" (IV) addresses his altered state and this position immediately. He pleads:
Broken in pieces all asunder,
Lord, hunt me not, A thing forgot, O n c e a p o o re c re a tu re , n o w a w o n d e r, A wonder tortur'd in the space
Betwixt this world and that of grace (1-6).
Reminiscent of the jangling claims in "Affliction" (I) that "thou troublest me" and yet that "I am clean forgot," the speaker here considers himself a "thing forgot" for the very fact that he is sought, suggesting that the speaker still, or perhaps once again, believes his affliction signifies God's absence rather than presence. The image of the speaker lying in scattered fragments hints that God may be "huntjingj" him to remake him. Unaware of or resistant to this likelihood, however, the speaker regards himself as a mutilated spectacle ("a wonder tortur'd"), though "wonder" also reminds us there might be something remarkable, miraculous, and even providential about his current state. In fact, the sorrow that "did twist" in "Affliction" (I) returns. For the very snaking of "a wonder" from the end of line 4 to the beginning of line 5 anticipates the "tortur'd" immediately after by giving concrete form to the sense of twisting embedded in the Latin word for torture, torquere. Contorted into what feels like a most unnatural position,
Thy Rod and Staff: Affliction as Affection in George Herbert
53the speaker laments his stranded condition "Betwixt this world and that of grace."
But these images of convolution, like so many figures in Herbert, can take on a positive or negative charge, and the charge seems unequivocally positive here. What the speaker experiences as torment is vital to both health and growth. As the speaker goes on to observe,
My thoughts are all a case of knives, Wounding my heart With scatter'd smart, As watring pots give flowers their lives. Nothing their furie can contrail,
While they do wound and prick my soul (7-12).
Drawing a comparison between the pain his thoughts inflict and the water poured on flowers, the speaker appears to glimpse the life-giving quality of his "wound[s]" and "prick[s]." In that the emphasis on "Wounding" and "wound" suggests the past tense of winding, Herbert further calls to mind the entwining and entangling of "Affliction" (I). Though grief may have its source in sin—often identified as round in Herbert—its winding as well as its wounding works in the speaker's eternal favor.
His claim that "Nothing their furie can contrail," however, appears amiss. For it would suggest a watering pot can fulfill its function without being held, though the speaker likely implies that the one holding it knows no restraint. According to the analogy, the "furie" of the speaker's thoughts is similarly beyond the pale. It is as though the speaker has no power over his mind or the thoughts it engages. Regarding either, the impotence felt on the receiving end appears to be fortunate, however, for these "pots give flowers their lives."
To some extent, the source of these thoughts must be almighty. For in the book of Hebrew s, one reads that "the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12). Such profligate severing certainly suggests the "wonder" of stanza one. What proceeds in Hebrews further elucidates the speaker's predicament. For the writer there acknowledges that "Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight" (Hebrews 4:13). The speaker is not "A thing forgot," nor has he been, nor could he be. When the speaker refers to himself as "Once a poore creature," he indeed speaks the truth, for there is a luxury in being showered with the attention he now receives. What the speaker articulates in terms of persecution is in reality God's craftsmanship.
While "contrail" and "prick" reintroduce the Platonic undercurrent of "Affliction" (I), here evoking images of Plato's charioteer managing two
horses, it is unclear which part of the soul would be proving intractable. For the stanza implies that it is the charioteer—or rational part of the soul, the speaker's very "thoughts"—which cannot be regulated. Likely, Herbert is rewriting Plato according to a biblical perspective. For if we consider God as source for the speaker's thoughts, we might regard God himself as charioteer of the speaker's soul, injuring its baser parts to reign them in while spurring the elevated forward. The disorder anathema to Plato may be as unavoidable as it is crucial for the spiritually degenerate. As the speaker explains:
All my attendants are at strife,
Quitting their place Unto my face:
Nothing performs the task of life:
The elements are let loose to fight, And while I live, trie out their right (13-18).
One recalls the soul of "Affliction" (I) feeling such sympathy forth flesh. Though undesirable in Plato, the turmoil indicated here may refer to the Christian's lot as summed up in 2 Timothy 4:7: "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." For the speaker's claim th at "N othing perform s the task of life" is obviously m istaken and contradicted by the previous stanza's life-giving "thoughts."
The "fight" and "strife" of the stanza, as their rhymes hint, may be both "right" and indicative of "life." When all the speaker's "attendants "stop fulfilling their functions, there is the suggestion that in "Quitting their place" they may be resigning as they ought, "that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin" (Romans 6: 6). Indeed, "while I live" recalls the grief of "Affliction" (I) which informed the speaker "roundly, that I lived." The speaker may be putting to death the old self, but he is also still grappling with it, for as the apostle Paul explains, "he that is dead is freed from sin" (Romans 6:7). While the speaker's old self lives, his "elements" will understandably assert themselves as legitimate authorities. Not until that self dies will they cease to "trie out their right," for they will no longer have any.
Still confused about w hat constitutes "life" and w hat "tasks" truly underw rite it, the speaker in the following stanza cries out to God— significantly, by presenting his own death and even God's as a threat. He begs:
O help, my God! let not their plot Kill them and me, And also thee, Who art my life: dissolve the knot,
T h y R od a n d Staff: A ffliction as A ffection in G eorge H erbert 55
As the sunne scatters by his light All the rebellions of the night (19-24).
Connecting with the earlier garden imagery which presented the speaker's heart as a flowerbed, the "plot" of this stanza expressly refers to the uprisings felt within. But by recalling the garden metaphor prior, Herbert reinforces the idea that there is something generative about such mutiny.
Granted, irony abounds in that the speaker fastens his own potential death to God's, for not only does the speaker neglect that through Christ, God has already died, but he also overlooks the Christian call to die with Christ. As the apostle Paul prods, "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?" Engaging with the trope of gardening himself, Paul elaborates, "For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection" (Romans 6:3-5).
Though the speaker has yet to recognize it, the "plot" within the speaker appears to be sanctioned by God. In order for God to live through the speaker and be his "life, "the speaker must be subjected to God's design, which fundam entally involves his own metaphorical death. In fact by urging God to "dissolve the knot," the speaker unwittingly asks what he ought. For as much as "knot" implies the "interwoven mixture of reason and passion, obedience and rebellion, which is the human being," the desire for its dissolution may signify a wish for death (Vendler 330). Moreover, by punning on the "not" of the stanza as well as that in the poem's opening, Herbert further articulates the speaker's request for life in divine terms: no longer "hunt me not," but "hunt me," and no longer "let not their plot / Kill them and me," but "let . . . them."7
While the image of a knot recalls the regenerative contorting suggested earlier in the poem, conceptually it points to the speaker's characterization of himself as an enigma, or "wonder." But a knot also connotes resistance and self-absorption. In asking God to obliterate the "knot"—"As the sunne scatters by his light / All the rebellions of the night"—the speaker invokes Christ ("sunne"). Significantly, he invokes him as the agent behind the verb "scatter." One recalls the scattered speaker of the opening stanza and the "scatter'd sm art" in the second stanza. Though the speaker may not recognize it, he has been the target of Christ's natural function all along. What the speaker regards as "rebellions of the night"—his thoughts, his warring innards—may be upsetting, but they may also be unraveling "the knot" and protecting the speaker from genuine rebellion: the unrelenting imperviousness that leads to perdition.
When in the closing stanza the speaker imagines the aftermath of this "dissolve," he envisions what the poem throughout insists has already been occurring. For by anticipating the "knot" of stanza four, the "elements...let loose" of stanza three suggests that the scuffling itself has been both sign
and promise of the speaker's extrication. Yet unaware of this reality, however, the speaker projects into the future concerning the unraveling he seeks:
Then shall those powers, which work for grief, Enter thy pay,
And day by day Labour thy praise, and my relief,
With care and courage building me,
Till I reach heav'n, and much more thee (25-30).
The "powers, which work for grief" have been under God's commission all along. These lines in fact may indicate that the lower parts of the soul ("powers") which had been serving appetite ("grief") would thus transfer their services to God, obeying him as the winged horses of Plato ideally subordinate themselves to charioteer. For as The Tem ple shows again and again, God alone can properly direct and manage all facets of the soul. Any philosophy which w ould locate justice or the capacity for rightful government within humankind—even within its faculty of reason—Herbert rejects.8
Though the speaker may not yet be in a place to "glory in tribulations" like the apostle Paul, he at least can glimpse grief becoming a source of "praise" and even "relief," though he also imagines the "Labour" that conversion would entail (Romans 5:3). Indeed, the original title for this poem in the Williams m anuscript—"Tentation"—may derive from the scriptural enjoinder to "count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing" (James 1:2-4). The speaker of "Affliction" (IV) may find such "patience" arduous and something he has yet to master, but as the verse implies, that "work" will make the otherwise "scatter'd" speaker of the poem whole again—even "perfect and entire."
The closing lines of the poem forward this reading as the speaker envisions "care and courage building me," the word "care" registering grief and affection at once—equally vital building blocks in the spiritual journey. Perhaps resonating with the winged horses and chariot of Plato, here driven unequivocally by God, the speaker represents his soul as achieving what in Plato is typically doomed to failure: gaining access not only to "heav'n" but beyond—in the speaker's case, "much more thee."
V.
Not surprisingly, when we come to "Affliction" (V), we find a speaker who has been reading again. One recalls the speaker at the end of "Affliction" (I): his reading and lamenting, his lifeless passivity, his wish to be a tree that "should grow" and prove useful, and finally his cursory engagement with Scripture which prompts him to "change the service." The speaker of
Thy Rod and Staff: Affliction as Affection in George Herbert
57"Affliction" (V), by contrast, has begun digesting his experience with the "courage" envisioned at the end of "Affliction" (IV). He consults Scripture not belligerently or to anticipate God's next move, but rather to comprehend and ascribe meaning to his suffering.
While the speaker of "Affliction" (I) resents his uselessness, the speaker of "Affliction" (V) does not even mention employment. Certainly the speaker of this final "Affliction" poem has begun yielding to the better judgment of his master. As the speaker of "Submission" asks, "How know I, if thou shouldst me raise, / That I should then raise thee?" He concedes that "Perhaps great places and thy praise / Do not so well agree" (13-16). Receptive to the salutary implications of his suffering, neither accusing nor advising now, the speaker of "Affliction" (V) begins:
My God, I read this day, That planted Paradise was not so firm As was and is thy floting Ark; whose stay And anchor thou art onely, to confirm And strengthen it in ev'ry age, When waves do rise, and tempests rage (1-6).
Countering the commonplace that "planted" signifies "firm," the speaker observes greater stability in what by definition moves and drifts: "thy floting Ark. "Similarly, what suggested perfection, he notes, has proved insufficient. Though "floting Ark" invokes Noah and the flood, it also recalls the ark of the covenant which was the symbol of God's agreement with humankind, the first of which was established in the garden of Eden ("planted Paradise"). As the writer of Hebrews affirms, "if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second" (8:7). By locating the Ark's potential for rootedness in "anchor" (which "thou art onely"), the speaker evokes the new covenant of grace which replaced the old, for an anchor was commonly thought to represent Christ for both its function and cruciform shape.
Not only has the speaker begun to illustrate the patience affliction may produce, he furthermore demonstrates what naturally evolves from that: from "patience, experience; and experience, hope" (Romans 5:4). As d iscu ssed in H eb rew s, God offered th ro u g h C hrist an "o ath for confirmation" by which "we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast" (6:16-19). Reiterating these notions—"confirmation," "strong consolation," "refuge," "hope," "anchor," "sure and stedfast"—the opening of "Affliction" (V) hints at such hope not only by adopting the figurative anchor but by embedding within "Ark" both the "refuge" given Noah as well as that offered the speaker through God's new covenant. Whereas the old covenant "decayeth and waxeth old... ready to vanish away" (Hebrews 8: 13), the new is firm, unalterable, and timeless; it is anchored in Christ himself.
As with the "Ark," the "waves" and "tempests" recall God's "rage" as illustrated in the Old Testament as well as the earlier "Affliction" poems. The confirmation this stanza alludes to, then, is not only Christ but also God's promise against the destruction of humankind. What initially appear to be tw o very different pledges—the rainbow and C h rist—in fact correspond. The rainbow secures humankind against God's wrath, even as Christ does. For while God will look on the rainbow and remember his promise, the apostle Paul insists that Christ is "at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us" (Romans 8:34). In taking our faults upon himself, Christ bears the blame and displaces the rage that would otherwise be left on us.
As if returning to the beginning of the "Affliction" series in order to rewrite it, the speaker from a much more seasoned perspective now explains:
At first we liv'd in pleasure; Thine own delights thou didst to us impart: When we grew wanton, thou didst use displeasure
To make us thine: yet that we might not part, As we at first did board with thee, Now thou wouldst taste our miserie (7-12).
Mapping Scripture onto his own experience, the speaker discovers Adam within himself. In fact, one is at a loss to even extract an individual self from the Edenic collective. It is as though the very act of reading Scripture converts the opening "I" into the "we" of the rest of the poem. As the speaker of "The Bunch of Grapes" observes, scriptural figures present types of ourselves: "Their storie pennes and sets us down" (11). The vital role Scripture plays in spiritual maturation is once more highlighted. For if this stanza emphasizes Christ as "anchor" and "stay," it first and foremost emphasizes Scripture as that, since Christ is "the Word... made flesh" (John 1:14).
The "pleasure" of line 7 takes us back to "Affliction" (I). By noting that God's "own delights thou didst to us impart," the speaker invokes the idea that we are partakers in a divine inheritance, an inheritance which—readers recall—the speaker of "Affliction" (I) expected to be pure pleasure. The speaker of "Affliction" (V), however, embraces his portion in full; having shared in the "delights," he also partakes of Christ's suffering. The suggestion rife throughout "Affliction" (I) that pleasure may prefigure pain returns. For while "impart" denotes the act of apportioning, it more subtly conveys a sense of direction into, within, or towards parting. The introduction of humankind's incontinence ("we grew wanton") immediately after "delights" have been "impart[ed]" furthers the notion that "delights" served as a catalyst for separation. At the same time, the speaker's concession that "thou didst use displeasure / To make us thine" suggests that prior to affliction, neither the speaker nor humankind was truly "thine."
Thy Rod and Staff: Affliction as Affection in George Herbert 59
"As we at first did board with thee "further recalls the speaker of "Affliction" (I) as he took up lodging with God and m arveled at the "furniture so fine," only to make it "fine to me." The delights extended, it seems, were not absorbed in their original state. That the stanza allows this lodging to be read as an appositive of "parking]" further hints that it was perhaps not so much these luxuries but the enjoyment of them in their modified state that portended separation.
When the speaker continues, he reintroduces the language of enticement from "Affliction" (I). But here the speaker acknowledges not only pleasure but also suffering as a means of ensnarement. Moreover, that ensnarement is conceived of as fortunate. He admits:
T h ere is b u t joy a n d grief; If either will convert us, we are thine: Some Angels us'd the first; if our relief Take up the second, then thy double line And sev'rall baits in either kinde
Furnish thy table to thy minde (13-18).
Whereas the speaker of "Affliction" (I) conformed God's possessions to his tastes, here the speaker cherishes God's possessions for their capacity to transform him. Though one may consider "relief" to signal the alleviation of "grief "more than "joy," The Temple throughout addresses the spiritual weariness "joyes" themselves may beget and the subsequent deliverance they necessitate. As the speaker of "Christmas" observes, God waited "till the grief / Of pleasures brought me to him, readie there / To be all passengers most sweet relief" (6-8).
What may seem antithetical ("joy and grief") are but two lines on a reel ("thy double line"), for God delivers from whatever separates humankind from him and extends as "line" and "baits" whatever draws us near. Within a few lines the speaker evokes not only Christ as fisher of men but also the charge, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me"(Luke 9:23). By locating "our relief" within "grief," and alongside "Take up," the speaker advances the idea that while pleasure may alienate one from God, suffering may imply pursuit and even communion—the literal sacrament of which "thy table" registers. In contrast with the speaker of "Affliction" (I), the speaker of "Affliction" (V) leaves the household equipment to God.
Whereas the speaker of "Affliction" (I) reviled his pain, the speaker of "Affliction" (V) embraces it—very nearly as the book of 1 Peter urges.9 The speaker finally affirms that
Affliction then is ours; We are the trees, whom shaking fastens more, While blustring windes destroy the wanton bowres,
And ruffle all their curious knots and store. My God, so temper joy and wo, That thy bright beams may tame thy bow (19-24).
The redemptive overtones of "Affliction" (I) which were lost on the speaker there emerge ostensibly here. The speaker who wished to be a tree has become just that. Much like the "floting Ark" proves "firm," the security of the speaker's own lodging, he now sees, depends on similar jostling. In contrast to the complaint of "Affliction" (I) that the speaker is "blown through with ev'ry storm and winde," the speaker here sees "blustring windes" as providing necessary upkeep; such w inds obliterate unruly chambers and upset "their curious knots and store."
That these "knots" are "curious" suggests their elaborateness and intricacy and may recall the speaker in "Confession" who admits how "like a master" he walled off areas of his heart from God. Not only did he make "Closets," that speaker confesses, but in those "many a chest," and "In those chests, boxes," and "in each box, a till" (2-5). Yet despite the inaccessibility intended, heattests, "No scrue, no piercer can / Into a piece of timber work and winde, / As Gods afflictions into man" (7-9). The request that God "dissolve the knot" and the salvific punning on the "not" of the speaker's pleas in "Affliction" (IV) return. To be hunted and killed within a Christian register is to be pierced and penetrated and made accessible throughout. That the winds of "Affliction" (V) "ruffle... curious knots" suggests they may also dissolve and undo them.
In these final lines, there is still a touch of wariness. For though the speaker has accepted God's use of "joy and grief" alike, he offers some final advice by urging God to distribute the two appropriately ("so temper joy and w o ") "T h at th y b rig h t b e a m s may ta m e th y b o w ." E n fo ld in g w ith in "bow" the weapon used to injure as well as the sign against wholescale destruction, the speaker evokes at once affliction and God's promise to limit such. Though "bright beams" appear as the parallel to "joy"—as does "bow" to "wo"—they also recall those on which Christ hung, invoking again the dispensation of the new covenant over the old. The speaker seems to be reminding God of the mercy promised in light of Christ's death.
But there is something finally striking about the visual interplay between the stanza's "bow" and "bowres." For with the "bow" of line 24 falling directly beneath the "bowres" of line 21—both marking the ends of their lines—Herbert insists readers hold these emblems together. Indeed, by hiding a "bow" within the ("wanton") "bowres," Herbert compels readers to consider anew the pain they themselves inflict on God and self alike, even as he insists on the presence of God's instrument within our very drifting. To separate anything from God conceptually—even sin, perhaps— is misguided. For nothing surpasses his reach. Within all acts, he is already acting.
Thy Rod and Staff: Affliction as Affection in George Herbert 61
For as the "Affliction" poems and Temple demonstrate, the real Gordian knot or wonder is that we pursue deterioration and resist recovery. The task of crucifying the self, Herbert suggests, is the work of a lifetime, involving pain and often occasioning contempt, hostility, and confusion. But as the speaker of "Affliction" (V) comes to recognize, in that discomfort resides life. What may be felts a tearing down is but the process of building up. As the book of Isaiah insists, "O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stone with fair colours, and lay thy foundations w ith sapphires" (Isaiah 54:11).Or as the speaker of "Paradise" attests, "Such sharpness shows the sweetest FREND: / Such cuttings rather heal then REND: / And such beginnings touch their END" (13-15).
Just as speakers of The Temple must learn to redefine the significance of th eir experiences beside G od's w ord, so read ers m u st contin u ally renegotiate the valences of those expressions, rem aining susceptible themselves to the instability and ambivalence of the speakers' progressions. For the art of God—Herbert finally insists—not only breaks apart and mends but does so until what appear as conflicting modes coincide. Contradictory meanings collapse w ithin single w ords even as images enfold double registers. Thus, Herbert embeds within single lines and phrases a jumble of resonances, which is also to say he discovers "the art / To turn his double pains to double praise" ("Mans Medley" 35-36).10
In that the speaker of "Obedience" hopes that "some kinde man would thrust his heart / Into these lines," Herbert calls on readers to reproduce this art in themselves, embracing the tension of these dualities even as they reinvent meaning for themselves (42-3). For though God's presence is neither always recognized nor welcomed by his speakers, Herbert insists that God has been present all along. And to the extent that that presence is discerned do the spiritual implications within each poem unfold and override all other implications.
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NOTES
1) All quotes from Herbert's poetry are from Helen Wilcox's edition and are cited by line numbers in the text of my essay.
2) All biblical citations are from the KJV.
3) This final line, as Schoenfeldt points out, reads as both "apology and accusation." He explains, "At once a request to be liberated from devout subservience to a figure of authority and a prayer to be made able to serve sincerely and w ithout grudging, the final line fuses submission and opposition in a single syntactically and ideologically conflicted utterance. Its deferential but confusing litotes seeks both surrender to deity and release from servitude" (77).
4) What Stanley Stewart remarks regarding "rest" and "peace" in The Temple applies here to "relief": it is "evanescent in the extreme," "no more than a moment between occasions of anxiety. As time passes, the same conflict recurs..." (98-9).
5) In the image of God as shepherd over the speaker's affliction one furthermore recalls that in pastoral practice a rod not only disciplines errant sheep and protects them from predators but is also used to part their wool for routine examination. When a sheep passed "under the rod," the shepherd opens up the fleece with it and passes his hands over the body, checking the state and cleanliness of skin and wool. The book of Ezekiel itself alludes to this practice when God declares, "And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of covenant" (20:37). 6) Schoenfeldt points out that "the imposition of pain is a primary practice of divine power, weaning the agonized mortal from any illusion of self- sufficiency" (152).
7) Heather Asals observes that "What seems to men in the present to be the speaker's request that his state be other than it is remains in the eyes of God and from the perspective of eternity but a figure of speech prophesying that his state will be other than it is" (402).
8) See Richard Strier's "Ironic Humanism in The Temple" for a discussion of Herbert's considerations of any "robust ethical humanism" which would imply "that through the exercise of virtue man can keep his passions under rational control and render them useful to the moral life" (45).
9) As 1 Peter 4:13 reads, "rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings."
10) This doubleness of Herbert's poetry has issued a magnitude of readings, often of single poems, many of which reject their counterparts. As Harman observes, "Critical opinion... gives evidence of the enormous difficulty involved in acknowledging contradictory imperatives" (510). As Ilona Bell further explains, "there are the double perspectives of poet and speaker," but "the speaker also acquires a double vision: Even as he continues to err, he learns to recognize the innate duplicities, the psychological distortions and logical contradictions of the frail human psyche" (77-8).
Thy Rod and Staff: Affliction as Affection in George Herbert 63
WORKS CITED
Asals, Heather. "The Voice of George Herbert's 'The Church.'" In Essential Articles: George Herbert. Edited by John R. Roberts. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1979. 393-407.
Bell, Ilona. "The Double Pleasures of Herbert's 'Collar.'" In "Too Rich to Clothe the Sunne": Essays on George Herbert. Edited by Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978. 77-88.
Harman, Barbara Leah. "George Herbert's 'Affliction (I)': The Limits of Representation." In Essential Articles: George Herbert. Edited by John R. Roberts. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1979. 508-24.
Herbert, George. The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. In The English Poems of George Herbert. Edited by Helen Wilcox. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 37-687.
Schoenfeldt, Michael C. Prayer and Power: George Herbert and Renaissance Courtship. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991.
Stewart, Stanley. George Herbert. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986.
Strier, Richard. "Ironic Humanism in The Temple." In "Too Rich to Clothe the Sunne": Essays on George Herbert. Edited by Claude J. Summers and Ted- Larry Pebworth. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978. 33-52. The English Bible: King James Version. Edited by Herbert Marks, Gerald
Hammond, and Austin Busch. New York: Norton, 2012.
Van Nuis, Hermine J. "Herbert's 'Affliction' Poems: A Pilgrim's Progress." Concerning Poetry 8, no. 2 (1975): 7-16.
Vendler, Helen. The Poetry of George Herbert. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975.
