Yet, lest perchance I should too happy be
    In my unhappiness,
  Turning my purge to food, thou throwest me
    Into more sicknesses. 
  Thus dost thy power cross-bias me, not making
  Thine own gifts good, yet me from my ways taking.

  Now I am here, what thou wilt do with me
    None of my books will show. 
  I read, and sigh, and wish I were a tree,
    For then sure I should grow
  To fruit or shade, at least some bird would trust
  Her household with me, and I would be just.

  Yet, though thou troublest me, I must be meek,
    In weakness must be stout,
  Well, I will change my service, and go seek
    Some other master out;
  Ah, my dear God! though I am clean forgot,
  Let me not love thee, if I love thee not.

  G.H.

[Sidenote:  Retires into Kent]

In this time of Mr. Herbert’s attendance and expectation of some good occasion to remove from Cambridge to Court, God, in whom there is an unseen chain of causes, did in a short time put an end to the lives of two of his most obliging and most powerful friends, Lodowick Duke of Richmond, and James Marquis of Hamilton; and not long after him King James died also, and with them, all Mr. Herbert’s Court-hopes:  so that he presently betook himself to a retreat from London, to a friend in Kent, where he lived very privately, and was such a lover of solitariness, as was judged to impair his health, more than his study had done.  In this time of retirement, he had many conflicts with himself, whether he should return to the painted pleasures of a Court-life, or betake himself to a study of Divinity, and enter into Sacred Orders, to which his dear mother had often persuaded him.  These were such conflicts, as they only can know, that have endured them; for ambitious desires, and the outward glory of this world, are not easily laid aside; but at last God inclined him to put on a resolution to serve at his altar.

[Sidenote:  Holy Orders]

He did, at his return to London, acquaint a Court-friend with his resolution to enter into Sacred Orders, who persuaded him to alter it, as too mean an employment, and too much below his birth, and the excellent abilities and endowments of his mind.  To whom he replied, “It hath been formerly judged that the domestic servants of the King of Heaven should be of the noblest families on earth.  And though the iniquity of the late times have made clergymen meanly valued, and the sacred name of priest contemptible; yet I will labour to make it honourable, by consecrating all my learning, and all my poor abilities to advance the glory of that God that gave them; knowing that I can never do too much for him, that hath done so much for me, as to make me a Christian.  And I will labour to be like my Saviour, by making humility lovely in the eyes of all men, and by following the merciful and meek example of my dear Jesus.”

[Sidenote:  Layton Ecclesia]