13/3/07 - English Literature - Donne and Herbert: Religious Lyrics

Donne and Herbert each have their individual personal way of addressing God in their poetry. In Donne, God can't get a word in edgeways, but in Herbert God is allowed to speak, sometimes directly.

Donne's poems express his personal emotions, not Christian emotions in general. Herbert, however, thought his poems would be of use to other Christians, which suggests he saw them as an expression of general Christian thought.

Donne's Holy Sonnet 17 was written after the death of his wife:

Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt
To Nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
And her soul early into heaven ravished,
Wholly on heavenly things my mind is set.
Here the admiring her my mind did whet
To seek thee, God; so streams do show the head;
But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed,
A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet.
But why should I beg more love, whenas thou
Dost woo my soul, for hers offering all thine:
And dost not only fear lest I allow
My love to saints and angels, things divine,
But in thy tender jealousy dost doubt
Lest the world, flesh, yea, devil put thee out.

He says that love has led to him finding God. He looked to heaven because of her death, implying that he is not just looking for God in heaven, he is also looking for his wife. There are also overtones of God stealing his wife, so God is his rival. A "holy thirsty dropsy" - Donne is hungry for God's love, yet the next line says that God cannot replace his wife. The poem is not misogynistic like Donne's Air and Angels; instead he places importance on his wife.

In Donne's Holy Sonnet 14, Donne is a sinner and wants to be freed from his sins by punishment from God.

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet I dearly love you, and would be loved fain.
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you shall enthrall me, never shall be free,
Now ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Here Donne needs to be ravished and destroyed in order to fully follow God; he needs to be rid of the world.

Herbert, on the other hand, does not associate power and love with violence or sex. He finds the relation of God to Christians is like that of patron to supplicant or parent to child power relations. Herbert never thinks himself equal to God, so there is no rivalry between them. The world, the flesh and the devil are used metaphorically, and they represent spiritual lapses, not carnal sins.

Some have suggested that Herbert's work represents the shape of the church, or the journey of a Christian. Most credit is given to the theory that Herbert's The Temple represents a man's body (because God dwells in him). Herbert explores this idea and brings to light the problems that arise from this.

Herbert's work is very involved with seeking reconciliation and losing it again.

The Temper I has a neat and peaceful resolution, yet The Temper II picks up form where the latter left off and creates yet more problems:

Herbert is constantly in a state of flux and movement in his relation to God. He is concerned to create a correct shape about his feelings towards God.

The Collar is a very disordered poem. Visually and orally, Herbert leads us to expect a repetitive theme and length pattern, but denies us. There is a rebellion against obedience. So his disorder has a kind of orderliness:

I struck the board and cried, "No more;
I will abroad!
What? Shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free, free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.
Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it,
No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
All wasted?
Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage,
Thy rope of sands,
Which pretty thoughts have made, and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and would not see.
Away! Take heed;
I will abroad.
Call in thy death's-head there; tie up thy fears.
He that forbears
To suit and serve his need,
Deserves his load."
But as I raved and drew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Methoughts I heard one calling, Child!
And I replied, My Lord.

In Easter, Herbert addresses Christ, and questions if anything is good enough to represent God.

Rise, heart, thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him may'st rise;
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and, much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The cross taught all wood to resound his name
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort, both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long;
Or, since all music is but three parts vied
And multiplied,
Oh let thy blessed spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.

In Vanity I Herbert treats everyone as vain. He adopts a negative sense of human achievement.

Finally, contrasting Donne’s confidence in his poetry (even as he most abases himself) with Herbert’s sense that nothing of his making can be adequate to address or reflect God, it both confirms and modifies the old finding that Donne’s religious lyrics reflect a disordered self in a disordered world, while Herbert’s reflect a disordered self in an ordered world.