Analysis Of Poetri "Virtue By George Herbert"
CHAPTER
ONE
INTRODUCTION
A.
Background
VIRTUE
Sweet
day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The
bridal of the earth and sky,
The
dew shall weep thy fall tonight;
For
thou must die.
Sweet
rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids
the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy
root is ever in its grave,
And
thou must die.
Sweet
spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A
box where sweets compacted lie,
My
music shows ye have your closes,
And
all must die.
Only
a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like
seasoned timber, never gives;
But
though the whole world turn to coal,
Then
chiefly lives.
"Virtue" is one of the poems in a collection of
verse called The Temple (1633), which George Herbert wrote during the
last three years of his life. By then, he had taken holy orders in the Anglican
Church and become rector in Bemerton, England, near Salisbury. Herbert's poems
are lyrical and harmonious, reflecting the gentle voice of a country parson
spreading the Christian message. He appreciates the beauty of creation not only
for its own sake but also because he sees it as a mirror of the goodness of the
Creator.
Implicit in "Virtue" is a delicately expressed
struggle between rebellion and obedience. The understated conflict lies between
the desire to experience worldly pleasures and the desire—or as Herbert would
insist, the need—to surrender to the will of God. The battle waged between
rebellion and obedience can be seen more clearly in one of the best-known poems
in The Temple, "The Collar." Therein, the poet
"raves" against the yoke of submission that he must bear until he
hears the voice of God call him "child"; then, he submissively
yields, as the poem ends with the invocation "My Lord!" This
conclusion indicates that what the narrator feels about the experience of the
natural world is of less authenticity than an inner voice of authority that directs
him toward God.
Herbert's poetry displays a conjunction of intellect and
emotion. Carefully crafted structures, like the first three quatrains, or
four-line stanzas, of "Virtue," all of which are similarly formed,
contain sensuously perceived content, like depictions of daytime, nightfall, a
rose, and spring. Such a combination of intellect and emotion, in which the two
forces, expressed in bold metaphors and colloquial language, struggle with and
illuminate each other, is most apparent in the poetry of one of Herbert's
contemporaries, John Donne, and is called metaphysical poetry. In
"Virtue," an example of this combination of the intellectual and the
sensuous can be seen in the second line of the third quatrain, when the spring
is compared to a box of compressed sweets.
In "Virtue," which comprises four quatrains
altogether, Herbert reflects on the loveliness of the living world but also on
the reality of death. Building momentum by moving from the glory of a day to
the beauty of a rose to the richness of springtime, while reiterating at the
end of each quatrain that everything "must die," Herbert leads the
reader to the last, slightly varied quatrain. There, the cherished thing is not
a tangible manifestation of nature but the intangible substance of "a
sweet and virtuous soul." When all else succumbs to death, the soul
"then chiefly lives." Not through argument but through an
accumulation of imagery, Herbert contrasts the passing glories of the mortal
world with the eternal glory of the immortal soul and thereby distinguishes
between momentary and eternal value.
"Virtue"
and many other poems from The Temple can be found in Seventeenth-Century
Prose and Poetry, edited by Alexander M. Witherspoon and Frank J. Warnke
and published by Harcourt, Brace & World, in 1963.
B.
Biography
of the Poet “George Herbert”
George Herbert
|
|
 |
|
Born
|
3
April 1593
Montgomery, Wales |
Died
|
1
March 1633 (aged 39)
Bemerton, Wiltshire, England |
Occupation
|
Poet,
orator, priest
|
Influenced:
·
Henry Vaughan
|
|
George Herbert was born
on 3 April 1593 at Black Hall in Montgomery, Wales. His family on his father's
side was one of the oldest and most powerful in Montgomeryshire, having settled
there in the early thirteenth century and improving and consolidating its
status by shrewd marriage settlements and continuous governmental service.
Herbert no doubt grew up with these tales but could not have had much contact
with the men themselves: his grandfather, evidently a remarkable courtier,
warrior, and politician, died the month after Herbert was born; and his father,
also an active local sheriff and member of Parliament, died when Herbert was
three and a half years old.
Herbert may have spent
his early years in a home without a strong father figure, but this is not to
say that the household lacked a commanding presence. His mother, Magdalen, from
the Newport family of Shropshire, was by all accounts an extraordinary woman,
fully capable of managing the complex financial affairs of the family, moving
the household when necessary, and supervising the academic and spiritual
education of her ten children. There is evidence of Herbert's deep attachment
to, and even identification with, his mother throughout his works: his earliest
surviving poems, which attempt to outline his direction as a poet, were written
and sent to her as a gift; he mourned her death (and celebrated her life) with
a collection of Latin and Greek poems, Memoriae Matris Sacrum (1627);
and The Temple is filled with images of childlike submissiveness and
maternal love, devotion, and authority.
George was tutored at
home and then entered Westminster School, probably in 1604, a distinguished
grammar school that not only grounded him in the study of Latin, Greek, Hebrew,
and music, but also introduced him to Lancelot Andrewes, one of the great
churchmen and preachers of the time. From Westminster, Herbert went up to
Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1609 and began one of the most important
institutional affiliations of his life, one that lasted nearly twenty years.
At Cambridge, Herbert
moved smoothly through the typical stages of academic success: he gained a B.A.
then an M.A.; obtained a Minor fellowship then a Major fellowship, which
involved increasing responsibilities as a tutor and lecturer; and was made
university orator in 1620, a position of great prestige within the university
that was often a stepping-stone to a successful career at court. The orator was
the spokesperson for the university on a variety of occasions, making speeches
and writing letters, and the little evidence that survives of Herbert's
activities as orator indicates that he served in this capacity with both
ceremonious wit and independent boldness. He was well able to offer the
required fatuous compliments to the king: in a letter thanking King James I for
the gift of his Latin works to Cambridge, he compared these volumes themselves
to a library far grander than that of the Vatican or the Bodleian Library at
Oxford.
Herbert's first poems
were Latin sonnets that he wrote for his mother. In them, he argued that a more
fitting subject for poetry than love for a woman was love for God. His first
published verses appeared in 1612. They were two poems, also in Latin, written
in memory of King James's son Prince Henry, who had died that year. In 1624 and
1625, Herbert was elected to Parliament to represent Montgomery. However,
rather than pursuing a career in politics or as a courtier, which had been his
intention, after the death of King James, he devoted himself to the priesthood.
In 1630, Herbert took holy orders in the Church of England and became the
rector of Bemerton, near Salisbury. He married Jane Danvers, the cousin of his
mother's second husband, in 1629. During his three years as a priest, Herbert
wrote A Priest to the Temple; or, The Country Parson, His Character, and Rule
of Holy Life, in which he set forth a guide for pastors in caring for their
parishioners and in developing their own spirituality.
On March 1, 1633,
Herbert died of tuberculosis. He had always been sickly, and one of his reasons
for not pursuing an academic career at Trinity College after graduation had
been the taxing effect of study upon his unsturdy constitution. From his
deathbed, he sent a manuscript of poems called The Temple, in which is included
the poem "Virtue," to his friend Nicholas Ferrar, a fellow clergyman,
asking him to publish them if he thought they were worthy and would contribute
to people's spiritual advancement. Ferrar indeed published the poems that year,
and by 1680 the collection had gone through thirteen printings.
By all accounts,
Herbert was a gentle and pious person with a sweet and generous nature. He
helped rebuild the decaying church at Bemerton with his own money and was loved
and esteemed by his parishioners, whom he cared for spiritually and, when
necessary, by sharing in their labor or giving them money. Izaak Walton, his
first biographer, wrote of him, "Lowly was Mr. George Herbert in his own
eyes, thus lovely in the eyes of others."
CHAPTER
TWO
ANALYSIS
A.
Lexical
and Semantic Analysis
Lines 1-4
Herbert
begins \"Virtue\" with an apostrophe, or invocation. That is, here,
he starts with a direct rhetorical address to a personified thing: as if
speaking to the day, the narrator says, \"Sweet day\" and then
characterizes the day as \"cool,\" \"calm,\" and
\"bright.\" Thus, for one noun, \"day,\" he provides four
adjectives. The rest of the line is made up of the adverbial \"so,\"
signifying intensity, repeated three times. Herbert is presenting a fairly
generic image, without any action, as no verb appears among these eight words.
Nor can a verb be found in the next line, which is a kind of appositive, or a
noun phrase placed beside the noun that it describes. \"The bridal of the
earth and sky,\" which describes the \"day,\" indicates no
action, instead merely illustrating and amplifying the conditions depicted in
the first line. That is, the \"sweet day\" is the bridal—the
marriage, conjunction, or union—of the earth and the sky. In sum, Herbert
presents a serene yet invigorating day and locates the reader in the celestial
and terrestrial realms simultaneously, for the day in its loveliness brings
them together.
Day,
however, gives way to night, just as life gives way to death: \"The dew
shall weep thy fall tonight,\" the narrator asserts, turning a daily
natural event, nightfall, into a metaphor. Beyond death, the line also suggests
grief at the loss of paradise on Earth, the Fall, which is the original cause
of death in the Judeo-Christian story of the Creation. The evening dew,
invested with emotion and made to represent grief, is equated with tears, which
are shed at nightfall over the Fall, the sin that brought death into the world.
Lines
5-8
In
beginning the second quatrain with the word \"sweet,\" Herbert
continues to connect the beauty of nature with impermanence, as any
\"sweet\" thing must, over time, lose its sweetness. Like the day,
the rose is an emblem of earthly splendor. It is \"sweet\" like the
day, saturated with color, and graced with magnificence. (Angry and brave are
complex words in Herbert\'s usage, as aspects of their meanings have all but passed
from English. Angry, in the seventeenth century, could signify
\"inflamed,\" while brave could signify \"having a fine or
splendid appearance.\" The suggestions of wrath and courage carried by
these words also reinforce the rose\'s magnificence, as it is characterized
thus as standing knowingly in the prospect of doom.) So magnificent is the rose
that Herbert calls one who looks at it a \"rash gazer.\" Here,
\"rash\" suggests a lack of necessary caution in taking in a sight so
dazzling that the gazer is moved to \"wipe,\" or rub, \"his
eye,\" as one does in wonder. Also, a warning may be understood to be
present in the word \"rash\": one who beholds the rose is in danger
of desiring its seductive but transitory beauty over the sweetness of what
endures in eternity, the soul itself.
As
with the day, so with the rose: despite its living splendor, death awaits.
\"Thy root,\" buried in the earth, as it must be if the rose is to
flourish, \"is ever in its grave.\" Thus, life and death are
entwined, and death is an ever-present aspect of life. Indeed, by emphasizing
the common ground shared by the root, the source of life, and the grave, the
receptacle for death, Herbert evokes two Christian lessons: first, that life
contains elements of death and must inevitably give way to death and, second,
that death is not finality but part of the continuum of existence. In awareness
of death, one realizes the true meaning and purpose of life and will thus
prepare his or her soul, through the exercise of virtue, for eternity.
Lines
9-12
The
word \"sweet\" begins the third quatrain as well, now describing the
spring, which is subsequently characterized as \"full of sweet days and
roses.\" As such, the delights presented in the first two quatrains are
contained in the third, and the narrator solidifies his suggestion of the
earth\'s rich bounty. In the second line of the quatrain, spring is likened to
\"a box where sweets compacted lie.\" Then, as in the previous
quatrains, the third line iterates the transience of earthly delights:
\"My music shows ye have your closes.\" Through this line, the
narrator offers the poem itself as proof of his argument regarding the
impermanence of things. By \"my music,\" the narrator refers to the
very verse being read, this poem. \"Close\" is a technical term in
music indicating the resolution of a musical phrase. Thus, the poetic verse,
like everything else the narrator has so far depicted, must come to an end, as
it temporarily does with the four stressed and conclusive beats of the twelfth line:
\"And all must die.\"
Lines
13-16
Breaking
the pattern established in the previous three quatrains, the final quatrain
begins not with the word \"sweet\" but with a limiting expression:
\"Only a.\" The reader has been told that the \"sweet
day,\" the \"sweet rose,\" and the \"sweet spring\"
all \"must die.\" In contrast to them is the soul: \"Only a
sweet and virtuous soul / … never gives.\" \"Sweet\" is no
longer used to denote an aesthetic quality, nor is the word sufficient to stand
alone anymore; in fact, in being yoked with \"virtuous,\" it is
invested with a moral and spiritual dimension. The soul that is sweet and
virtuous, unlike the spring, the rose, and the day, \"never gives,\"
that is, it never gives way to death, instead ever enduring. Such a sweet soul,
disciplined by virtue like wood that has been seasoned, is fully strengthened.
Lumber that has been seasoned, aged, and dried is more suitable for use in
construction than is fresh lumber; \"seasoned timber\" is sturdy and
enduring. The conflagration suggested in line 15 by the image of \"the
whole world turn[ing] to coal\" alludes to chapter 3, verse 10, of 2
Peter, in the New Testament, where Peter speaks of \"the day of the
Lord,\" the judgment day when \"the elements shall melt with fervent
heat\" and \"the earth also and the works that are therein shall be
burned up.\"
Thus,
the first three quatrains present images of earthly beauty, but each ends with
the word \"die.\" The last quatrain presents images of an eternal
soul and of a conflagration that turns the whole world, except that virtuous
soul, to blackened coal, and its last line ends with the word
\"live.\" As such, the entire poem, which all along warned of death,
shows the way in which Herbert believes that he and his readers may achieve
eternal life: by shunning transient glory and humbly embracing virtue.
B.
Imagery
and figurative Language
In the first stanza we
see the image of the “day”; like all the metaphors used in the poem, first, it
is shown some attractive traits of the image. Like it is sweet, cool, calm and
bright, and in the second line it is said that the daylight is like the
marriage of the earth and sky. Whenever the day turns into darkness, the
morning dew mourns and cries with grief because the day must die. The dew here
may also symbolize the youth, which is lost with the end of the life. There is
a joy dominating the first two lines of the first stanza, whereas in the gloomy
third line, the death theme can be seen. Also, while the periodic commas in the
first line makes the line slower and longer to read, the constant “s” sound and
repeated “so” words make an impression of perpetuation of the “day”, which will
be wiped with the third and fourth lines.
The metaphorical image
in the second stanza is the “rose”. The color of the rose is the color of
anger, which is supposed to be red. It is also a brave and daring color, so it
makes all people who are looking incautiously, wipe their eyes because it is
bright and splendid. The rose is beaming with life, however as in the third
line of the second stanza indicates, its roots are already in its own grave.
That represents a natural bond between humankind and death, the eternal resting
place for all men.
Third image is the
spring which is the sum of the first two images. The spring has both sweet days
and roses, it is the time of year which is compared with a box of compressed
sweet. Its density of life and sweetness makes an impression of eternity again,
as the first two metaphors, but spring has an end too. This “end” feeling is
given with the word “close” which is the musical ending, or a final chord. Thus
the spring and therefore life, compared with a musical piece or a song that
also will end eventually.
C. Themes
The poem, “Virtue” by
George Herbert, mainly develops with the theme that the world and all living
beings and unliving things are mortal, and everything in this world will
eventually end or die. This theme is developed by three metaphors; first one is
a “day”, second one is a “rose” and third one is the “spring”. All of these
first three images are attractive things that people would want them to last
forever and they are concrete images. Nevertheless in the last stanza, the
reader can see an abstract image of “the soul” and by that image, the poem
reaches a conclusion.
The
central theme of "Virtue" is the short life of earthly beauty, except
that in Herbert's view it is not people who are transient so much as the
wondrous things that delight us: the sweet day; the dew; the sweet rose; the
spring. All of them must die in Herbert's world. Also, his use of thou refers
not to any person but to the end of the day, the rose and the spring.
CHAPTER
THREE
CONCLUSION
Poem
"Virtue" is rich in imagery and repetition. This poem reminds us that
generally the life of this world which full of beauty is temporary, because
everything will end in death. Herbert believes that there will be more eternal
life after this life.
In
the first line, for example, Herbert presents visual imagery in the phrase
"Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright" in the line of Herbert
symbolize the word 'day' with the state of the world lives a beautiful,
peaceful, and sunny. The beautiful life was he compare such a marriage between
the earth and the sky, "The bridal of the earth and sky," but then in
the last two rows, Herbert illustrates that all the beauty of the world will
end in death, all men will weep greatly sad because in the end all beings must
die. "The dew shall weep thy fall tonight; For thou must die."
This
contradictory situation is also repeated by Herbert in the second and third
stanza, more Herbert uses figure of speech paradox. In the second stanza, for
example, he describes a beautiful rose color symbolizes anger and courage, but
eventually rose will take root in the cemetery, which means that it will always
lead to death, as seen in the repetition of the word "thou must die"
three times at the end of each stanza.
But
in the last stanza, Herbert revealed that only the pious soul which will remain
eternal life later in the day of reckoning. As explained earlier in the poem
"Virtue" is, Herbert describes his religious views on the final day.
Herbert will realize that there is life after death and eternal life in the
world is only temporary. All the beauty of this world is artificial, false or
deceptive alone. Because according to him, only those who near by the God good,
do good, and close to God will live forever.
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