“when you’re weary / feeling small / when tears are in your eyes / i will dry them all”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday:

Prayer (I), George Herbert

Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth
Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices; something understood.


Sonnet the verbless vivid. Published in 1633 in The Temple, Herbert’s only collection, as just “Prayer,” the first of a couple poems with that title, thus the commonly added (I). That last semicolon (which in modern practice would probably be a colon) is pulling an amazing amount of weight.

---L.

Subject quote from Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon & Garfunkel, which is just as much a hymn.

Comments

[puddleshark]

That last semicolon... is pulling an amazing amount of weight.

It certainly is.

Lovely. Thank you!

[cmcmck]

I do love Herbert's work.