In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • The Slack and Defeated Winner in George Herbert's "Love" (III)
  • Chauncey Wood

The phrase "grow slack" occurs in the first verse of "Love" (III):

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,            Guiltie of dust and sinne.But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack            From my first entrance in,Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,            If I lack'd any thing.

A guest, I answer'd, worthy to be here:            Love said, You shall be he.I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah my deare,            I cannot look on thee.Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,            Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame            Go where it doth deserve.And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?            My deare, then I will serve.You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat:            So I did sit, and eat.1

Up until the middle of the last century an editor like Canon F.E. Hutchinson would offer as a commentary on "Love" (III) a simple comparison with a very similar passage in Southwell's Saint Peter's Complaint, without any argument pro or con with regard to the possibility that it was Herbert's source. However, about forty years ago this approach through literary history began to give way to an approach through literary interpretation; specifically by an analysis of the imagery of the poem as physical – indeed as sexual. A review of some of the commentaries is instructive. [End Page 5]

John R. Mulder, in a nine-page 1973 letter to Seventeenth-Century News, addresses both design and methodology in Herbert's Temple, and includes a glance at "Love" (III). He writes:

In "Love" (III), the pull of contending wills, that of God and Man, becomes a stasis. The Poet as impotent lover, grown "slack / From my first entrance in," still insists on merit and serving so that, finally, God's Power forces him to partake of God's Love: "You must sit down."2

Just a few years later, in 1978, Greg Crossan, without reference to Mulder's piece, finds an extended "sexual metaphor [in] the opening stanza." Growing slack is seen as impotence, and the speaker "finally agrees to 'serve': serve the Church, serve the communion, yes, but also serve in a sexual capacity."3 Unfortunately, this statement misreads the action of the poem, in which the speaker does not agree to serve but rather insists that he serve rather than be served by his host.

Chana Bloch, writing in 1985, gives us an extended study of "Love" (III) in terms of its biblical antecedents. Towards the end of her remarks she notes in a general way that there is a "suggestion" in the beginning and the end of the poem "of a sexual encounter between an inhibited or impotent man and a gently loving, patient woman."4 She justifies this reading by seeing the Song of Songs in the Bible as a "precedent" for what Herbert does. We should note, however, that in the Song of Songs overtly sexual language is construed as spiritual, while in Herbert a spiritual encounter has been construed by some as sexual.

In 1991 Michael Schoenfeldt published a lengthy and detailed analysis of the sexual imagery that could be found in in the poem, along with a defense of doing so:

Herbert's portrait of his encounter with divine love is invested with a physical referentiality which makes a purely spiritual or allegorical reading of the poem difficult to sustain. Herbert's concern for his own social power in relation to God – a concern we have traced throughout our study – is manifested in the poem's preoccupation with the physical manifestations of sexual potency. In the context of a sexual tryst, to "grow slack / From my first entrance in" indicates a loss of erection, [End Page 6] just after penetration. Moreover, to "grow slack" is inherently oxymoronic, a phallic version of the proud humility highlighted in the last chapter. Similarly, Love's "sweetly questioning" if the speaker "lack'd any thing" plays upon the common Renaissance euphemism of "'thing" for "penis." If the speaker has grown...

pdf

Share