George Herbert, one of the leading “metaphysical poets” of the 17th Century

Easter

• Rise, heart, thy lord is risen. Sing his praise
• Without delays,
• Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
• With him may’st rise:
• That, as his death calcinèd thee to dust,
• His life may make thee gold, and, much more, just.

• Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
• With all thy art,
• The cross taught all wood to resound his name
• Who bore the same.
• His stretchèd sinews taught all strings what key
• Is best to celebrate this most high day.

• Consort, both heart and lute, and twist a song
• Pleasant and long;
• Or, since all music is but three parts vied
• And multiplied
• Oh let thy blessèd Spirit bear a part,
• And make up our defects with his sweet art.

Easter Wings

• Lord, Who createdst man in wealth and store,
• Though foolishly he lost the same,
• Decaying more and more,
• Till he became
• Most poore:

• With Thee
• O let me rise,
• As larks, harmoniously,
• And sing this day Thy victories:
• Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

• My tender age in sorrow did beginne;
• And still with sicknesses and shame
• Thou didst so punish sinne,
• That I became
• Most thinne.

• With Thee
• Let me combine,
• And feel this day Thy victorie;
• For, if I imp my wing on Thine,
• Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

Prayer (I)

• Prayer the Church’s banquet, angels’ 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 tower,
• 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.

George Herbert (1593–1633) was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest who is considered one of the leading “metaphysical poets” of the 17th Century, a group that also included Herbert’s contemporary and fellow cleric, John Donne. Considered one of the greatest of English religious poets, Herbert also stands out as a literary great in English prosody. Besides full command of the English language, Herbert also exhibits stunning feats of imagination in his poems, especially in his experiments with verse forms — including pattern poems, whereby a poem’s physical shape on the page, sometimes printed sideways, matches the poem’s subject matter. “Easter Wings” printed above is an example of this sort of pattern poem.