George Herbert (1593-1633)

Love (III)

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,

dust and sinne

Genesis 3:19—'dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.' The speaker combines mortality (dust) with moral failure (sin) as twin disqualifications.

Guiltie of dust and sinne.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack

quick-ey'd Love

Love is personified as the host of a feast. In Herbert's theology, this is Christ at the communion table, noticing the guest's hesitation.

From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack'd any thing.
A guest, I answer'd, worthy to be here:
Love said, you shall be he.
I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah my deare,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

Who made the eyes

The Creator-argument: if God made your eyes, he can look at them regardless of their condition. Logic deployed against shame.

Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame

marr'd them

Herbert's verb choice matters—not 'ruined' or 'destroyed' but 'marred,' suggesting damage that can be repaired.

Go where it doth deserve.

who bore the blame

The poem's theological hinge: Christ's atonement. The guest's shame was already carried by the host—past tense, already done.

And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?
My deare, then I will serve.
You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.

sit and eat

The simplest words in the poem. After all the theological argument, communion happens in monosyllables. The guest finally accepts.

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Communion Drama

This is the final poem in Herbert's *The Temple* (1633), positioned as the culmination of the entire collection. The Love speaking here is Christ, and the setting is Holy Communion—the Eucharist that Herbert, as an Anglican priest, would have administered weekly. The 'meat' is the consecrated bread and wine.

The poem stages communion as a dramatic dialogue where the guest tries three times to refuse and the host counters each objection. First refusal: 'I'm unworthy' (dust and sin). Answer: 'I'll make you worthy.' Second refusal: 'I can't look at you' (shame). Answer: 'I made your eyes, I can look at them.' Third refusal: 'Let me serve instead of being served' (the last dodge of pride disguised as humility). Answer: 'Sit down and eat.'

Herbert structures this as a debate the speaker loses—and losing means accepting grace. Each of Love's replies is shorter, simpler, more direct than the speaker's elaborate self-accusations. The theological point: human unworthiness is real but irrelevant because Christ already 'bore the blame.' The past tense matters. The work is finished; the guest just needs to accept the invitation.

Herbert's Plain Style

Herbert was famous for what his contemporary Richard Crashaw called 'a sweetness ready penned'—theological complexity in plain English. This poem uses almost entirely monosyllabic words. The longest word is 'ungratefull' (three syllables). 'Sweetly questioning,' 'smiling did reply'—these are conversational rhythms, not pulpit rhetoric.

Notice the pronouns: the speaker says 'my soul,' 'my shame,' 'my deare,' obsessively claiming ownership of his unworthiness. Love responds with 'I' statements: 'I made,' 'I bore.' The shift from 'my' to 'I' tracks the poem's movement from self-focus to acceptance.

The final line—'So I did sit and eat'—is six monosyllables of pure submission. After 32 lines of resistance, the speaker's acceptance takes the simplest possible form. Herbert, who studied rhetoric at Cambridge and could write elaborate conceits when he wanted, chooses to end his entire poetic collection with words a child could understand. The plainness is the point: grace doesn't require sophisticated comprehension, just acceptance.