The Sacramental Poetry of George Herbert

Abstract

Since the beginning of century, critics have been rediscovering the complexity of George Herbert's apparently simple and easy-flowing religious verse. Until the 20th century, critics treated Herbert as a sincere religious poet and little more until someone noticed what he was doing with the form of most of his lyrics. gentle poet of the tiny church of Bemerton has proven to be a continual source of amazement for those who have bothered to track him in his formal tricks. In some ways, especially in his search for relationships between meaning and form, he is the most baroque of English poets. In a 1968 article, I analyzed Herbert's baroque qualities, using as a jumping-off place Heinrich Wolfflin's famous statement, ... form must breathe. That is, apart from all expressional differences, the basic notion of the Baroque.' (And we are all acquainted with John Ciardi's famous title: How Does A Poem Mean?) But Herbert went far beyond the usual implications of that concept. Herbert went straight to the heart of the traditional Anglican definition of a sacrament-The outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace-and became a highly conscious practitioner of sacramental poetry. In paper, I will try to show the range of expression he employed in bringing that belief into the construction of his poems. most obvious examples are Herbert's Shaped Poems: The Altar and Easter Wings. It is too easy to notice only the usual 17thcentury genre, however, and miss the detailed message that Herbert conveys with his use of the form. The Altar has a great many internal messages that are essential to the meaning of the poem. First, of course, is the fact that it is an Old Testament altar rather than a contemporary church altar. It is constructed of stones of natural shape, those cut by God rather than man. There is no cement except the natural cement of tears. No workman's tool hath touched the same.2 Second, the altar is Herbert's heart, which is a stone so hard As nothing but / Thy pow'r doth cut. Third, the altar is the poem itself, this frame / To praise thy