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Before that sinne turn'd flesh to stone,

And all our lump to leaven;

A fervent sigh might well have blown
Our innocent earth to Heaven; 7

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of Redemption, as an old-world story of ill-requited seignorial magnanimity; of Humility, as a character in an Aesop's fable; 9 of the wondrous metamorphosis of the whilom King of Terrors; now, through the Saviour's death:

gay and glad

As at doom's day,

When souls shall wear their new array,

And all thy bones with beautie shall be clad ;

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of the dizzy play of transfused spirits, human and divine, in Clasping of Hands; 11 and of Sunday, the day on which 'Heaven's gate stands ope', yet a day of mirth':

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O Day most calm, most bright,

The fruit of this, the next world's bud.
Th' indorsement of supreme delight,
Writ by a friend, and with his bloud;

The couch of time; cares calm and bay;
The week were dark but for thy light;
Thy torch doth show the way.1 12

Not rarely, though I know that the rust of antiquity is never wholly absent from Herbert's verse, I am reluctant to acknowledge any qualification by such an accident of its perennial, absolute music. To all time belongs a succession of lovely creations; the picture of the soul swaying from hope to despair, and from despair to hope, according as it feels that spirit or flesh, brute or angel, or God's creature, is in the ascendant :

take thy way; for sure thy way is best; Stretch or contract me thy poore debter; This is but tuning of my breast,

To make the musick better; 13

the cry to the falling star to lodge in the singer's heart, and, having burnt its lusts to death, fly homewards with it to their Saviour's bright dwelling; 14 the agonized gratitude in the Dialogue, with its indignant disclaimer of a right to share in the benefits of Christ's sacrifice; 15 the perfect grace of Church-music :

Now I in you without a bodie move,

Rising and falling with your wings;

We both together sweetly live and love,

Yet say sometimes, 'God help poore Kings ! ' 16

the spiritualizing of groans,' quick and full of wings', from a contrite heart:

And ever as they mount, like larks they sing :
The note is sad, yet music for a king; 17

the black gloom, with one thin ray piercing through, of Mortification, man's death in life; 18 the Christmas Carol, combining the senses into one interchangeable offering of thanksgiving, till the sunshine sings, and the music shines; 19 Divine Love's lovingly impatient imperativeness to the timid guest; 20 the prayer at waking to be enabled to discover the Creator and his works by the fresh light of the new dawn: Teach me thy love to know:

That this new light, which now I see,

May both the work and workman show;
Then by a sunne-beam I will climbe to thee;

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and that precious thing, the Christian's patent of nobility for menial toil :

Teach me, my God and King,

In all things thee to see,
And what I do in any thing,
To do it as for thee.

A servant with this clause

Makes drudgerie divine;

Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,

Makes that and th' action fine.22

Lastly, there are Virtue, and The Flower. The first is of a quiet beauty which is curiously winning:

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridall of the earth and skie;

The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;

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As for The Flower, what self-abasement, what a proud

soaring fancy!

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! ev'n as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean

The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away

Like snow in May,

As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivel❜d heart
Could have recover'd greennesse? It was gone
Quite underground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown ;
Where they together

All the hard weather,

Dead to the world keep house unknown.

These are thy wonders, Lord of Power,
Killing and quick'ning, bringing down to hell
And up to heaven in an houre;
Making a chiming of a passing bell.
We say amisse

This or that is;

Thy word is all, if we could spell.

O that I once past changing were,

Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!
Many a spring I shoot up fair,

Offring at heav'n, growing and groning thither;
Nor doth my flower

Want a spring-showre,

My sinnes and I joining together:

But while I grow in a straight line,

Still upwards bent, as if heav'n were mine own,
Thy anger comes, and I decline :

What frost to that? What pole is not the zone,
Where all things burn,

When thou dost turn,

And the least frown of thine is shown ?

And now in age I bud again,

After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my onely light,
It cannot be

That I am he

On whom thy tempests fell all night.

These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide:
Which when we once can finde and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide.
Who would be more,

Swelling through store,

Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.24

As his best, when in the mood to sing, and not singing

because the Church Calendar ordered a song, he can scarcely be excelled. Mistrust of the vanity of imagination had habituated him to check spontaneous inspiration. As soon as he gave it freedom, forth it gushed, sparkling, gracious, and grateful. The diction is at once forcible and elegant; not the less racy that it is scholarly, not the less fitted for prayer and praise that it had been the language of Universities and Courts.

He was a religious enthusiast grafted on a man of the world. I wonder whether his votaries read and meditate on the wisdom of the Church-porch.25 What can Nicholas Ferrar, his pious literary executor, have thought of that part of the bequest? Never was there produced a more useful manual for the conduct of life. In general its maxims might have been fathered by Poor Richard. It is a storehouse of advice, not in the least fanatical, against a host of common follies; the third glass'; the taking of God's name in vain, which, worse than lust, wine, and avarice, with their positive, if evil, pleasures, 'gets thee nothing'; living beyond one's means, especially in middle life or age; the as silly 'scraping', than which nothing is 'so wasteful'; play 'for gain, not sport', and 'striving to sit out losing hands'; much laughter-'The witty man laughs least'; fierceness in arguing-' Cunning fencers suffer heat to tire'; with many other saws as true, and as secular. Lofty and generous precepts are liberally intermixed; such as:

Fool not; for all may have

If they dare try, a glorious life or grave;

Take starres for money; starres not to be told
By any art;

Thy friend put in thy bosome; wear his eies

Still in thy heart, that he may see what's there.

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