A Year With George Herbert

I have never enjoyed poetry that much

But, this semester I am taking a 

Great Books class at Boyce and one

of the books we have to read is 

A Year With George Herbert

by my professor, Dr. Jim Orrick. 

I began it with much apprehension, but 

then found myself actually enjoying it!

Here is one of my favorites so far,  

The H Scriptures II: 

Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine,
 And the configurations of their glory!
Seeing not onely how each verse doth shine,
But all the constellations of the story.
 
This verse marks that, and both do make a motion
Unto a third, that ten leaves off doth lie:

Then as dispersed herbs do watch a potion,
These three make up some Christians destiny:

 
Such are thy secrets, which my life makes good,
And comments on thee: for in ev’ry thing
Thy words do find me out, & parallels bring,
And in another make me understood.
 
Stars are poor books, & oftentimes do miss:

This book of stars lights to eternal bliss.

I love the comparison between stars 

and the Scripture. Just as every star is 

placed perfectly to make a constellation 

and to point to each other, so the 

Scriptures make a story and point to 

Christ. Just as people will use the 

stars (astrology) to tell their future, 

so the Scripture tells us our 

future in Christ. 

In the second stanza, Herbert uses 

potions to describe Scriptures as 

well. Each individual ingredient 

required for a potion can not do 

anything on its own. But, combined, 

it can heal. The Scriptures are the 

same: one verse on its own may not 

make much sense, but put it with 

several others, a whole concept appears. 

Richard Baxter, one of the 

great theologians, wrote of Herbert: 

"I must confess, after all, that 

next the Scripture poems, 

there are none so savoury to me, as 

Mr. George Herbert’s . . . Herbert 

speaks to God like one 

that really believeth a God, 

and whose business in 

the world is most with God. 

Heart-work and Heaven-work 

make up his books.”