The Seventeenth Century: Milton

Abstract

GEORGE HERBERT (1593–1633), a priest for only his last three years, and Rector of Bemerton in Wiltshire, also produced his great spiritual poetry late in life. I choose as an example of his style his sonnet Christmas; and I leave the original spelling for no better reason than to show how ‘modern’ it is, save for a couple of apostrophes where we have not really improved the system:

All after pleasures as I rid one day,

My horse and I, both tir’d, bodie and minde,

With full crie of affections, quite astray;

I took up in the next inne I could finde.

There when I came, whom found I but my deare,

My dearest Lord, expecting till the grief

Of pleasures brought me to him, readie there

To be all passengers most sweet relief?

O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light,

Wrapt in nights mantle, stole into a manger;

Since my dark soul and brutish is thy right,

To Man of all beasts be not thou a stranger:

Furnish and deck my soul, that thou mayst have

A better lodging, then a rack, or grave.