“‘And now let’s tune our instruments.’"*

Walton.

This story reminds us that besides being a parson Herbert was a courtier and a fine gentleman.  His courtly friends were surprised that he should lower himself by helping a poor man with his own hands.  But that is just one thing that we have to remember about Herbert, he had nothing of the puritan in him, he was a cavalier, a courtier, yet he showed the world that it was possible to be these and still be a good man.  He did not believe that any honest work was a “dirty employment.”  In one of his poems he says: 

“Teach me my God and King, In all things Thee to see, And what I do in anything To do it as for Thee. . . . . .  “All may of Thee Partake:  Nothing can be so mean Which with his tincture (for Thy sake) Will not grow bright and clean.

    “A Servant with this clause
    Makes drudgery divine;
    Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws
    Makes that and th’ action fine.

    “This is the famous stone
    That turneth all to gold;
    For that which God doth touch and own
    Cannot for less be told."*

    Counted.

I have told you the story about Herbert and the poor man in the words of Izaak Walton, the first writer of a life of George Herbert.  I hope some day you will read that life and also the other books Walton wrote, for although we have not room for him in this book, his books are one of the delights of our literature which await you.

In all Herbert’s work among his people, his wife was his companion and help, and the people loved her as much as they loved their parson.  “Love followed her,” says Walton, “in all places as inseparably as shadows follow substances in sunshine.”

Besides living thus for his people Herbert almost rebuilt the church and rectory both of which he found very ruined.  And when he had made an end of rebuilding he carved these words upon the chimney in the hall of the Rectory: 

    “If thou chance for to find
    A new house to thy mind,
    And built without thy cost;
    Be good to the poor,
    As God gives thee Store
    And then my labor’s not lost.”

His life, one would think, was busy enough, and full enough, yet amid it all he found time to write.  Besides many poems he wrote for his own guidance a book called The Country Parson.  It is a book, says Walton, “so full of plain, prudent, and useful rules that that country parson that can spare 12d. and yet wants it is scarce excusable.”

But Herbert’s happy, useful days at Bemerton were all too short.  In 1632, before he had held his living three years, he died, and was buried by his sorrowing people beneath the altar of his own little church.

It was not until after his death that his poems were published.  On his death-bed he left the book in which he had written them to a friend.  “Desire him to read it,” he said, “and if he can think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul, let it be made public.  If not let him burn it.”