What does the Lord want from us, in return for his gifts?
That’s not exactly the question you’d ask if you were a pagan Greek. You’d ask what the gods wanted from you, so that they would give you what you wanted in return. And if anything, the Greek gods were a sunny lot. They weren’t like the gods of the businessmen in Tyre and Sidon, who wanted human sacrifice. But they did want the right hymns, and the god Dionysus did get his special seat in the theater at the great festival in Athens, when the playwrights put on their shows.
God wants nothing from us, and everything — it all depends on how you look at it. He exacts the payment of gratitude: a grateful heart. But that’s nothing at all! Not a sheep or an ox, a field or a temple, not flesh or blood, or sacks of gold, but what anyone can pay in full in the bright glow of love. And yet since God gives us our very beings, true gratitude can’t be a smile and a nod, and then we go about our business as if God were a bellboy we have just flipped a coin to. Love calls for love, and true love does not spare.
That is why the poet George Herbert, an Anglican minister and a wise guide for us in our own spiritual lives, begs the Lord in our poem this week for yet another gift beyond all the gifts He has given to him already. The beggar begs for a grateful heart. And he does it with a kind of sly beggarly confidence, saying — quite rightly — that unless the Lord gives him that grateful heart, all the rest of his gifts will have gone for nothing. So he knocks on the door, he weeps, he groans, confiding in the words of the Lord, that “to him who has much, more will be given,” and what is more, here, is everything indeed. For gratitude ushers man into the very life of God Himself, a life of complete self-gift and love. From nothing were we made, and Herbert’s groan, a kind of nothing, interpreted by love, is a sweet “country air.” In the end, the really grateful heart is not just looking for what happens to please it, as if the gifts of the Lord “had spare days,” so that you sing your gratitude only when the sun is shining warm and clear. The grateful heart need not, in the end, utter a single word, or make a single groan, or shed a single tear. Its soft pulse, regular, steady, and quiet, is the praise of God.
Thou that hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, a grateful heart.
See how thy beggar works on thee
By art.
He makes thy gifts occasion more,
And says, If he in this be crossed,
All thou hast given him heretofore
Is lost.
But thou didst reckon, when at first
Thy word our hearts and hands did crave,
What it would come to at the worst
To save.
Perpetual knockings at thy door,
Tears sullying thy transparent rooms,
Gift upon gift, much would have more,
And comes.
This notwithstanding, thou wentst on,
And didst allow us all our noise:
Nay, thou hast made a sigh and groan
Thy joys.
Not that thou hast not still above
Much better tunes than groans can make;
But that these country-airs thy love
Did take.
Wherefore I cry, and cry again;
And in no quiet canst thou be,
Till I a thankful heart obtain
Of thee:
Not thankful, when it pleaseth me;
As if thy blessings had spare days:
But such a heart whose pulse may be
Thy praise.
I'm curious if you have any thoughts about the actual structure of the verses with that little isolated pentametric iambic tail wagging at the end of each verse whose lines elsewise are tetrameter in length
(And just to be up front here, if I sound like I am trying to use those multisyllabic words with confidence and so-called knowledge, I am not -- as demonstrated by the fact that I initially typed "quadrameter" above as a guess of what a four-beat line might be called. But hurriedly looking it up, I find the correct term to be "tetrameter." I suppose I'm more like a child playing with his dad's unlocked tool chest when he's not there, and hoping I don't bust anything precious like a fancy China dish as I swing his hammer around on top of things to see what happens.)
So I guess my question is whether that "structure" is a recognized one, or one that Herbert devised himself to employ for the particular purposes of this poem, perhaps not unlike his shape poems, eg Easter Wings, and all. If it IS a recognized form, I haven't seen it used elsewhere. So I'm guessing is his own created device.
With that assumption I would guess his intention to be pretty much a "visual" display of what you have suggested in your comments about the poem's meaning content -- ie, that as you write, he "begs the Lord...for yet another gift beyond all the gifts He has given to him already." The previous three lines of tetrameter (ooh, that's just a fun word to say over and over one's head, "tetrameter, tetrameter, tetrameter") have their first and third lines rhyming, but then leaving that all-important second line unrhymed within the four-beat per line setup.
I suddenly have this image in my head of the master sitting at table with a plate of food glancing down at his dog below who is looking up anxiously with begging eyes and a "please sir, I want some more" confidently-and-excitedly-wagging tail (in particular I can see our own past dogs, chocolate lab, Strider, with his battering ram long brown tail [the source of his middle name, "Grond"], or perhaps more appropriately, our border collie/Australian shepherd mix, Star, with her dainty butt-wiggling docked tail (she was a rescue dog that was given us to care for "temporarily" until a permanent home could be found -- you can guess how that went, I'm sure), and even (having seen videos and pics on facebook) your own beloved Jasper.
If there's anything that conveys the idea of the gratefulness you describe in writing at the end of your column, "...The grateful heart need not, in the end, utter a single word, or make a single groan, or shed a single tear. Its soft pulse, regular, steady, and quiet, is the praise of God," it is most evidently seen in the wagging tail of a dog who hangs on his master's every glance and word in anticipation.
In any case, that master looking down at the pup's enthusiastic hope for a rhyme to that second line, despite the fact that all the beats have apparently already been used up, is of course already well-planned by the master, who is even now preparing to toss the treat down to be gobbled instantly until the next verse comes anew.
As a quick aside, I can't help noticing that "sort-of rhyme" in the fourth verse of "comes" with "rooms." In a quick search, I see it said that Herbert "...was born in Wales into an artistic and wealthy family and largely raised in England." Would this suggest that even though my American ears here the sort-of rhyming word as "kums," a Welsh accent would sound like "cooms" to more fully rhyme with "rooms" when read by a one from the British Isles?
I could go on and on about nearly every line of the poem and its meter, or rather, variations from strict meter and how those variations are not just an "I couldn't make the meter strict here, so this'll have to do" effort, but rather that they seem to "apply" neatly with the poet's intention (as it seems to me, but of course only my opinion) of the line (and, you might guess, I HAVE gone on and on in my head before beginning to type this reply -- you think this portion is already long? Be grateful I am [I think] coming to a close :-) ).
I perhaps may give the impression in other replies about poetry (and literature in general), here and elsewhere, that I am set on the novice's determination and initial efforts to "count syllables on fingers" and such as though that is the prime motivation for reading poetry, but, for better or worse, it is for me, really pretty much exactly the opposite. I read the poem (or whatever literary source) and am struck by the beauty of various lines or verses or overall theme or whatever, and then, only AFTER sensing that beauty, try to figure it out.
Again, another image in my head typing that just now, is of a person watching a good magician doing his act and being amazed at what happens and only then asking himself "How did he DO that?" Or, as I have often written about (and have so done, recently) the "magic" of Euler's identity (I can almost always work SOME kind of mathematical reference into a comment, don't ya know :-) ), it is the simple "beauty" of the equation that takes one aback (well, if one has a mathematical bent), and it is only after, that one begins contemplating the unbelievable effect and simplicity of those five fundamental numbers and three fundamental operations and the supreme equivalence relation tossed in for good measure, all compacted into a concise equation WITH NO EXTRA BITS or waste, whatsoever! Once again it is the observer seeing the magician and wondering "how did he DO that?" The beauty and wonder come first, and the question comes only after the beauty hits the gut (and I guess you could say that "afterwards" only, is the point at which I pull my dad's hammer out of the toolbox and start swinging it around on things to see what it sounds like and what happens as a result).
(And if that is what constitutes "coming to a close," well...)