Denial (#poem, #Dewithon2023)

 

Denial

When my devotions could not pierce

      Thy silent ears;

Then was my heart broken, as was my verse:

    My breast was full of fears

      And disorder:

    

  My best thoughts, like a brittle bow,

      Did fly asunder:

Each took his way; some would to pleasures go,

    Some to the wars and thunder

      Of alarms.

      

  As good go any where, they say,

      As to benumb

Both knees and heart, in crying night and day

    Come, come, my God, O come,

      But no hearing.

      

  O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue

      To cry to thee,

And then not hear it crying! all day long

    My heart was in my knee,

      But no hearing.

      

  Therefore my soul lay out of sight,

      Untun'd, unstrung:

My feeble spirit, unable to look right

    Like a nipt blossom, hung

      Discontented.

      

  O cheer and tune my heartless breast,

      Defer no time;

That so thy favours granting my request,

    They and my mind may chime,

      And mend my rhyme.

-George Herbert

George Herbert was born in Montgomery, in Wales, in 1593. He took orders in the Anglican church, and lived most of his adult life in England, but represented Montgomery in Parliament at the end of his life. He died young-ish, of tuberculosis, in 1633. I like the way he lets the last line of each stanza hang, until finally God hears his request. 

It's Dewithon, the Welsh reading month at Paula's BookJotter.