affliction: V

My God, I read this day,

That planted Paradise was not so firm

As was and is thy floting Ark; whose stay

And anchor thou art onely, to confirm

And strengthen it in ev'ry age,

When waves do rise, and tempests rage.

At first we liv'd in pleasure;

Thine own delights thou didst to us impart:

When we grew wanton, thou didst use displeasure

To make us thine: yet that we might not part,

As we at first did board with thee,

Now thou wouldst taste our miserie.

There is but joy and grief;

If either will convert us, we are thine:

Some Angels us'd the first; if our relief

Take up the second, then thy double line

And sev'rall baits in either kinde

Furnish thy table to thy minde.

Affliction then is ours

We are the trees, whom shaking fastens more,

While blustring windes destroy the wanton bowres,

And ruffle all their curious knots and store.

My God, so temper joy and wo,

That thy bright beams may tame thy bow.

George Herbert

George Herbert, (born April 3, 1593, Montgomery Castle, Wales—died March 1, 1633, Bemerton, Wiltshire, Eng.), English religious poet, a major metaphysical poet, notable for the purity and effectiveness of his choice of words. A younger brother of Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, a notable secular metaphysical poet, George in 1610 sent his mother for New Year’s two sonnets on the theme that the love of God is a fitter subject for verse than the love of woman, a foreshadowing of his poetic and vocational bent.

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affliction: V

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