Penitential Voices in Herbert's Poetry

Penitential Voices in Herbert's Poetry by Bruce A. Johnson The speakers of Herbert's penitential poems strike various, widely disparate postures before God. One type of speaker raises a voice of extreme self-abasement; another examines himself calmly and deliberately, exposing his sinful attitudes to himself and God; another kind of speaker rails at God in ever increasing confusion until God intervenes, overwhelming the now penitent speaker; sometimes the speaker leads himself from an incorrect initial attitude toa correct final posture by an act of will and by the exercise of reason; and in some poems the penitential sorrow of the speaker is submerged beneath a tone of joyful assurance, assurance in divine love and in the efficacy of penitence. The most easily identified of these voices of repentance is also the voice of many of Herbert's least satisfactory poems; the voice of extreme self-abasement can be cloying and monotonous. Poems in which the main thrust is self-abnegation tend to become catalogues of whining indictments of the self. Helen Vendler assembles the following list from eight poems: the speaker is "full of rebellion"; he has a heart full of "venom," "quarries of pil'd vanities," and only "shreds of holinesse"; his "most foul transgression," his "usurping lust," has "disseized" God; he is a "wretch," "a crumme of dust," "a brittle crazie glasse"; his soul is "dark and brutish"; he is full of "strange pollutions," and "infections"; he loves swine and wishes to wallow in dirt; in sum his life is a "constant blot."1 Vendler and Rosemond Tuve dismiss this type of poem as generally unsuccessful;2 Arnold Stein, thinking of "Home," "Longing," and "Sighs and Grones," finds that "something in the narrowness of the subject, or in [the poet's] relation to it, imposes restrictions that he is not able to overcome successfully in the poem."3 And some of Herbert's work corroborates these valuations. "Conscience," forexample, isa profound indictment Bruce A. Johnson of excessive self-recrimination which is false, harmful, or, at best, useless. To wallow in one's unworthiness is not only unproductive, but it is an affront to God, whose work has made the sinner blameless. To help distinguish the voice of self-abasement from the other penitential voices that will be discussed, it is worthwhile to note that this voice has a particular theological shading. While the degree to which Herbert stands in the Calvinist as opposed to the Christian humanist and Arminian traditions is still open to question, the voice of extreme self-abnegation is wholly compatible with Calvinist thought. Calvinist insistence on complete human depravity apart from divine grace is a significant background for the unrelenting groan of the voice ofextreme self-abasement. "Justice" (I) insists that the speaker cannot really praise or love God: "/ do praise thee, yet I praise thee not. . . . My soul doth love thee, yet it loves delay" (II. 8, 1 1). He finally admits "I cannot skill of these my wayes."4 The initial error of the speaker in "The Thanksgiving" is that he thinks he is able to act effectively to please God. The starting point for penitential self-abasement comes at the poem's end, as the speaker is overwhelmed and broken down by the immensity of Christ's sacrifice. Man cannot of himself love or praise God, or preach God's word. Neither can he even be sorry and repent. "Affliction" (II) expresses this view of man as devoid of responsibility even for his own grief: "Thou art my grief alone, / Thou Lord conceal it not: and as thou art / All my delight, so all my smart" (II. 11-13). Musae Responsoriae XL, "Ad Deum," points out that even the groans of our hearts are put there by God: "O sweetest / Spirit, you who fill up minds / With holy groans."5 Finally, "The Holdfast" states clearly that we cannot even repent without aid: "But to have nought is ours, not to confesse / That we have nought" (II. 9-10). The voice of self-abasement is never more Calvinist than here where, as Joseph Summers says, "The essential 'act' is that the individual should abandon any pretence that he can act...