Herbert's Biblically-Titled Poems

Herbert's Biblically-Titled Poems by Chauncey Wood There are more than 160 poems in George Herbert's The Temple, the precise number depending upon editorial decisions about splitting or lumping together certain works. While these 160 poems abound with biblical allusions, biblical quotations, and biblical imagery, only five have biblical titles; that is, titles that give chapter and verse from the Bible. The five poems are: "Coloss. 3.3. Our life is hid with Christ in God"; "The Pearl. Matth. 13.45"; "Ephes. 4.30. Grieve not the Holy Spirit, &c"; "The 23d Psalme"; and "The Odour. 2. Cor. 2.15" (verse number added by Hutchinson).1 Because the interdependency of Herbert's poems is increasingly of interest critically, we may benefit by looking at these five poems collectively and provisionally calling them a group. Only the first two of the five poems in our newly aggregated group are to be found in the Williams Manuscript, perhaps suggesting that these biblicallytitled poems particularly appealed to Herbert so that in his revisions he chose to more than double their number. It is also worth noting here that three of the five come from Paul's letters, suggesting that the group as a whole can be expected to have some of Paul's characteristically hortatory tone. They will tell the reader to do something. Because of their biblically specific titles these five poems clearly differ in kind from the rest of the poems in The Temple, although not necessarily in degree or effect. All of the poems in The Temple invite some sort of devotional reflection; these five challenge the reader to ponder a specific biblical text with a specific goal: to translate a biblical phrase into a Christian action, which is one of the ways the Bible was used as well as read four hundred years ago. Because George Herbert's technical skill and his ability to evoke a poetic response reach the modern reader so directly, his concern for the applicability oí his biblical themes can easily be overlooked today. But in his own day it would not have been. George's brother Henry wrote a prose devotional treatise called Herbert's Golden Harpe comprised entirely of biblical quotations grouped into paragraphlength entries.2 Henry's devotional concern is both educational and inspirational, but just in case a reader overlooked any of this he included "A table for the readie finding of euerie seueral Petition; 36Chauncey Wood Applicable according to our present disposition." While today we use a PDA or Personal Digital Assistant for our "To Do" lists, in the seventeenth-century one would use a PDA or Personal Devotional Assistant like Herbert's Golden Harpe for the same purpose. In fact, the manuscript of the Golden Harpe in the Huntington Library is just about the size of a PDA. Henry's concern for the applicability of his devotional prose was shared generally by his brother George, who is overtly didactic in works like The Country Parson and, it will be argued, is working ultimately for didactic ends in the five poems under study here. In emphasizing this didactic use of the Bible by George Herbert I take a very different approach from Chana Bloch, who has written brilliantly about Herbert's poetic use of the Bible in these and other poems in the canon.3 Because we have not had the vast devotional literature of the period in clear view we have tended to see the poems solely as art, whereas both Herbert brothers were very much concerned with teaching. George, after all, in poem after poem depicts a protagonist who makes wrong choices. The author has presumably already learned the lessons he now teaches, so his concern now is to offer instruction in a palatable form. George Herbert's concern for the applicability of the Bible is plainly set out in "The H. Scriptures" (I) and (II). In the first of these poems, he emphasizes the sweetness of the Bible not as a rhetorical but a medicinal taste. One reads the Bible not to relish its sweetness aesthetically, but to apply its medicine to one's hurts: Oh Book! infinite sweetnesse! let my heart Suck ev'ry letter...