When the desire after system or order degenerates from a need into a passion, or ruling idea, it closes, as may be seen in many women who are especial house-keepers, like an unyielding skin over the mind, to the death of all development from impulse and aspiration.  The same thing holds in the church:  anxiety about order and system will kill the life.  This did not go near to being the result with George Herbert:  his life was hid with Christ in God; but the influence of his profession, as distinguished from his work, was hurtful to his calling as a poet.  He of all men would scorn to claim social rank for spiritual service; he of all men would not commit the blunder of supposing that prayer and praise are that service of God:  they are prayer and praise, not service; he knew that God can be served only through loving ministration to his sons and daughters, all needy of commonest human help:  but, as the most devout of clergymen will be the readiest to confess, there is even a danger to their souls in the unvarying recurrence of the outward obligations of their service; and, in like manner, the poet will fare ill if the conventions from which the holiest system is not free send him soaring with sealed eyes.  George Herbert’s were but a little blinded thus; yet something, we must allow, his poetry was injured by his profession.  All that I say on this point, however, so far from diminishing his praise, adds thereto, setting forth only that he was such a poet as might have been greater yet, had the divine gift had free course.  But again I rebuke myself and say, “Thank God for George Herbert.”

To rid our spiritual palates of the clinging flavour of criticism, let me choose another song from his precious legacy—­one less read, I presume, than many.  It shows his tendency to asceticism—­the fancy of forsaking God’s world in order to serve him; it has besides many of the faults of the age, even to that of punning; yet it is a lovely bit of art as well as a rich embodiment of tenderness.

  THE THANKSGIVING.

  Oh King of grief! a title strange yet true,
    To thee of all kings only due! 
  Oh King of wounds! how shall I grieve for thee,
    Who in all grief preventest me? goest before me.
  Shall I weep blood?  Why, thou hast wept such store,
    That all thy body was one gore. 
  Shall I be scourged, flouted, boxed, sold? 
    ’Tis but to tell the tale is told.
  My God, my God, why dost thou part from me?
    Was such a grief as cannot be. 
  Shall I then sing, skipping thy doleful story,
    And side with thy triumphant glory? 
  Shall thy strokes be my stroking? thorns my flower? 
    Thy rod, my posy?[101] cross, my bower? 
  But how then shall I imitate thee, and
    Copy thy fair, though bloody hand? 
  Surely I will revenge me on thy love,
    And try who shall victorious prove.