‘something understood’: Spiritual Experience and George Herbert’s Sonnets

Abstract

Drawing from The Temple, a seventeenth-century volume of devotional poems written by George Herbert, this essay sets out to unfold how deliberately choosing constraint can lead to a spiritual experience. Beginning with a formal analysis of Herbert’s shape poem “The Altar” to demonstrate how form and content simultaneously create meaning in lyric poetry, the remainder of the essay focuses on Herbert’s most formally constrained poems: the sonnets. Using Herbert’s treatment of the sonnet form as evidence of deliberately choosing constraint, Herbert’s poetics transform our conceptual understanding of the elements that make up a Christian religious experience. Titled by the same words that provide the foundation for Christian spiritual experience, the sonnets “Prayer”, “Love”, and “Redemption”, among others, renew our understanding of religious experience by refocusing our attention via the constraints of the poetic form. By pairing together key religious concepts with the constrained attentive demands of poetry, Herbert’s sonnets challenge notions of passivity and call instead for a renewed understanding of the Christian experience. Characterized by the need for careful attention and neurological intensification—a specific quality of religious experience—Herbert’s sonnets become rooms, or perhaps, poetic chapels, where readers have the chance to experience the spiritual ultimacy of “something understood”.

1. Introduction: Formal Spiritual Experience

Like many literary scholars, I first encountered George Herbert’s “The Altar” as part of a literary theory course: the meticulously measured syllables and carefully structured line breaks served as exemplary characteristics of formalist poetry. Given that the form is the most overt feature of the poem, it is obvious why the individual guiding the discussion would choose to rely on “The Altar” as a classic example of formal and structural analysis. While the presentation of the poem on the printed page encourages readers to assume straight forward hermeneutics—the form represents the meaning of the poem—Herbert’s poem, like most poetry, conceals much of its meaning beneath the surface.

“The Altar” begins not as a poem but rather as a shape (Figure 1).1 Justified at the center to showcase highly intentional line breaks, the shape capitalizes on the juxtaposition between printed space and whitespace to form a silhouette resembling what many readers understand to be an altar. The relationship between the poem’s shape and the poem’s title often plays a key role throughout the evaluation of the poem’s content. Admittedly, the words—“ALTAR”, “HEART”, and “SACRIFICE”—typographically set apart from the rest of the text, seem to reinforce a straightforward interpretation that the poem—in the shape of an altar, with the title of an altar, mentioning an altar—is indeed about an altar.

As I reflect on those first discussions about this poem, the conversation unfolding largely along the same lines I outlined above, I am now struck by the duality of the poem and my own inability to simultaneously engage with the poem’s form and content without disregarding key elements of literary theory. The most obvious theoretical element is that regardless of what the poem claimed to be, whether formally or within its content, the poem was first and foremost a poem—a deliberate artform that relies on the affordances of artifice to challenge the limitations of language in an effort to convey what cannot be captured through other means. To assume straightforward hermeneutics in “The Altar” flattens the poem’s poetics and reduces its content into its shape. Voicing the importance of resisting such actions, Ellen Rooney asserts, “Form is neither the external and superficial mold into which content is poured nor the inner truth of the text, expressed in its organic shape. It is neither an icon nor a fixed or static structure; it is in the most fundamental sense not given” (Rooney 2000).

When specifically applied to “The Altar”, Rooney’s theoretical understanding of form pushes back against any interpretation that reduces the poem’s shape to be representative of its meaning. As neither external mold nor inner organic shape, Rooney’s understanding of form separates its significance from the interpretation of the content. To paraphrase Mutlu Blasing, another lyric theorist, either we can be seduced by the poem’s form, or we can resist the form’s temptation and rather parse through the poem’s content, but we cannot do both at once (Blasing 2007). In evaluating “The Altar”, what is lost, or gained, when one system of meaning superimposes its signification onto the other? A brief survey of Herbert’s scholarship easily demonstrates the amount of scholarly attention afforded to this short poem and efforts to tease out the implications of that precise question. The question that I find more pressing is not anchored in contrasting one system of meaning against the other but one that seeks to understand the implications of a poem that deliberately and overtly tasks its readers with an experience—an experience that speaks to both the head and the heart. Or, in other words, a spiritual experience with literature.

2. Literature (Theory) and Spiritual Experience

A spiritual experience with literature, when understood in terms of spirituality, works against notions that assume literature to always be hermeneutically self-contained—a tradition that is commonly identified with New Criticism. In order for a poem to be “self-contained”, a term popularized by Cleanth Brooks’ 1947 publication, The Well Wrought Urn—a foundational text in the school of New Criticism—Brooks claims that poetry should be interpreted without historical or biographical information (Brooks 1942). While methods of removing historical context and biographic information largely detach the text from the author, that same approach detaches the text from the reader as well. A text can only be self-contained in so far as its interpretations are universal; universal interpretations cannot be unique to individual readers.

The literary theory response to New Criticism is reader-response criticism. Stanley Fish, emphasizing that “reading is an activity, something you do”, championed the methodology of reader-response for post-Reformation English literature by anchoring the meaning of a text to its experience (Fish 1972). While notions of a reader’s experience form the center of Fish’s claims, he reveals the limitations of his method when he admits his reader is “neither an abstraction, nor an actual living reader, but a hybrid” (Fish 1972, p. 407). Fish writes, “[M]y reader is a construct, an ideal or idealized reader; somewhat like Wardhaugh’s “mature reader” or Milton’s “fit” reader, or to use a term of my own, the reader is the informed reader”. The parameters Fish outlines for his informed reader are anchored in linguistical and literary mastery, meaning that rote knowledge rather than personal experience serves as the foundation of interpretation. As an idealized reader, Fish’s informed reader is removed from lived experience that would result in individualized interpretations. Within this framework, once a reader becomes “informed” through linguistic and literary studies, their experience with the text becomes “informed” as well, with interpretations limited to the extent of one’s professional training. While not universal—by nature of being an informed reader, one must seek out specific knowledge, making themselves replicable—Fish’s reader-response theory results in a similar type of interpretation supported by New Criticism—one that essentially removes the individual reader’s lived experience from the meaning-making process.

The problem with both these schools of thought is that the unique human experience has been stripped away from literary criticism. In Brooks’ construction, a text’s meaning exists independently from the reader, and in Fish’s, meaning is contingent upon a reader’s conformity within a prescribed intellectual system. Either way, neither approach affords a space for anything comparable to a spiritual experience to exist. This is precisely because a spiritual experience, generally, and the study of spirituality is inherently “self-implicating” and rooted in the interior experience of an individual (Frohlich 2001, p. 68).

In seeking to understand Herbert’s text spiritually, my experience with “The Altar” is inevitably informed by my own “lived spirituality”, a term defined by Mary Frohlich in Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality. Frohlich writes:

I have become convinced that “lived spirituality” is, and must remain, the key point of engagement for any study of spirituality. In saying this, I am clearly taking a stand for the “self-implicating” character of such study. What we study, how we study, what we learn, is rooted in our own spiritual living. In this context, “spiritual living” does not necessarily mean adherence to a defined religious or spiritual tradition. It does mean, however, that one attends with as much authenticity as one can muster to the truth of one’s own experience”.

(Frohlich 2001, p. 68)

The truth of my own spiritual experiences takes root in my need to define myself within my Christian faith tradition. Raised in a place where my faith tradition was both ubiquitous and expected, it often felt like the descriptions of spiritual experiences I heard from others who all followed the same talking points and the same affective responses, as though the goal of the church was to create an informed believer who could easily deliver the proper answers similar to the literary interpretations from Fish’s informed reader. Within this context of spiritual similarity, I discovered a longing for spiritual significance outside of the forms both prescribed and institutionalized by my faith tradition. The paradox of my longing is that I did not want to leave the organization but rather discover individual significance within its already present framework. In other words, I wanted my interior spirituality to be unique despite my external religious forms being the same as those around me.

My desire for internal significance and interest in religious forms largely influenced my decision to study poetry. Navigating a religious landscape in many ways similar to my own, the post-Reformation English poets of the seventeenth-century demonstrated through poetry the very thing I wanted my spiritual life to reflect: the ability to have form and content signify both simultaneously and distinctly, without one being flattened into the other. Within my own studies, this spiritual expansion is largely tied to poetry’s ability to function as both an intensification and displacement of religious experience by making the familiar unfamiliar. Once unfamiliar, religious forms and expressions are afforded the potential to take on new meaning—meaning that is not tied down to cultural expectations. In other words, seventeenth-century English devotional poetry offers me a model that informs and reforms my own spiritual experiences. By seeking to understand my religious experiences as poetry, I have been afforded space for my spiritual desires to expand, to breathe, and to seek Communion with God with both my head and my heart.

In that spirit, my aim in this essay is to explore the ways form and content throughout Herbert’s The Temple offer a model for deepening spiritual experience. The method of this essay is informed by close reading practices anchored in literary theory, to which is added my own lived spirituality. This method means that my personal experiences with faith and spiritual experience both inform and shape my experience when reading and interpreting the poems discussed throughout this essay. I have been drawn to questions regarding poetic form in an effort to wrestle with and better understand my questions regarding forms of spirituality. Specific to my investment in forms of worship, this essay turns to some of Herbert’s most formally constrained poems. Once anchored in formal devotion via formal poetry, the main argument of the essay demonstrates how individual experiences can be facilitated within constraint. As demonstrated throughout the essay, the poetic constraints associated with Herbert’s poems entitled “Prayer” and “Redemption” have the capacity to revitalize a reader’s perspective of these core religious elements, and therefore, deepening one’s spiritual experience—and as informed by literary theory, the experience of reading becoming a spiritual exercise in and of itself. With a focus on spiritual experience, this essay leans into the experience of choosing constraint, as demonstrated in the sonnet form, as a key element of discovering one’s individual experience with God.

Recalling Frohlich’s assertation that “What we study, how we study, [and] what we learn, is rooted in our own spiritual living”, I pause here to admit my own investments regarding devotional form. The majority of the poems I have included in this study each employ the same poetic form, namely that of the sonnet. Of the many literary forms available to poets in the post-Reformation period, the sonnet is characterized as a highly constrained poetic form that is associated with amorous desire. The interpretive gap between love poetry and devotional poetry makes Herbert’s use of the sonnet form throughout his volume all the more relevant for a study such as this. In prior scholarship regarding Herbert’s sonnets, the amorous desire associated with the poetic form has encouraged many scholars to approach these poems, looking for moments of experimentation and innovation. Such studies, serving as the theoretical foundation for my own work, have been interested in demonstrating how Herbert purifies the sonnet form in service of God. Unique to this essay, I turn to Herbert’s sonnets not in spite of the constrained form but rather because of it. My argument differs from previous scholarship by focusing on how Herbert chooses constraint rather than innovates it. By pairing together key religious concepts with the constrained poetic form, Herbert’s sonnets challenge notions of passivity and call instead for a renewed understanding of the Christian experience. Characterized by the need for careful attention and neurological intensification—a specific quality of religious experience—Herbert’s sonnets become rooms, or perhaps, poetic chapels, where readers have the chance to experience the spiritual ultimacy of “something understood”.

3. Sonnets for the Sacred

While George Herbert is often classified by literary scholars as a seventeenth-century English devotional poet, efforts to specify Herbert’s particular form of devotion based on his poetry have failed to be conclusive. During Herbert’s life, English Protestantism underwent many different changes and expansions. Herbert’s devotional poetry points to many forms of English Christian faith, some poems demonstrating an inclination towards Laudian ceremony, others espousing Calvinistic features of predestination, and still others invoking medieval images of Christ’s suffering, reminiscent of Catholic iconography. In recent years, the denominational default for discussing Herbert’s convictions has been to describe him as paving the “middle way”—or in other words, Herbert may be understood as operating close to the center of mainstream Protestantism (Hodgkins 1993). What this interpretive context illuminates for this particular study of Herbert’s poetry is an opportunity to be less concerned with categorizing spiritual experience and more interested in the experience itself. Herberts’s poetry demonstrates an overt interest and acceptance of all forms of spiritual experience, and The Temple’s many different poetic forms, specifically the sonnet form, participate in facilitating the ultimate experiences with God that Herbert’s poetic persona seeks.

Evidence of Herbert’s fascination with sonnets as a potential form of spiritual expression arose many years before the publication of The Temple. In 1610, the then-young Herbert sent two poems to his mother as gifts to celebrate the beginning of the new year. In a poem that asks God: “Why are not Sonnets made of thee?” the young poet leaned into the complexities of the expression of devotion while using the ubiquitous love poem form. The first sonnet, in its entirety, reads:

• My God, where is that ancient heat towards thee,

Wherewith whole shows of Martyrs once did burn,

Besides their other flames. Doth Poetry

• Wear Venus Livery? only serve her turn?
• Why are not Sonnets made of thee? And layes

Upon thine Altar burnt? Cannot thy love

Heighten a spirit to sound out thy praise

• As well as anyone she? Cannot thy Dove
• Out-strip their Cupid easily in flight?

Or, since thy ways are deep, and still the same,

Will not a verse run smooth that bears thy name!

• Why doth that fire, with by thy power and might

Each breast does feel, no braver fuel choose

Than that, with one day, Worms, may chance refuse.

• The poetic preoccupation demonstrated by using a sonnet to ask the question: “Why are not Sonnets made of thee?” has encouraged many scholars to understand these early poems as Herbert’s attempts to showcase his own poetic wit.2 While exhibiting poetic skill, these early poems also demonstrate Herbert’s rejection of secular verse. Herbert’s critique of Venus’ sonnets speaks towards a literary tradition—popularized by Philip Sidney—that claimed lyric poetry was best employed in the service of praising God. In Sidney’s Defense of Poesie, the chief type of poetry, “both in antiquity and excellency”, is poetry that is used to “imitate the inconceivable excellences of God…in signing praises of the immortal beauty, and the immortal goodness of that God who gives us hands to write, and wits to conceive!” That Herbert specifically challenges the use of poetry in praise of worldly beauty and in the service of Venus demonstrates his commitment to Sidney’s ideals.3 Herbert strengthens the critiques of the first poem in the fourteen constrained lines of the second:

• Sure, Lord, there is enough in thee to dry

Oceans of Ink; for, as the Deluge did

Cover the Earth, so doth thy Majesty:

• Each Cloud distills thy praise, and doth forbid
• Poets to turn it to another use.

Roses and Lillies speak thee; and to make

A pair of Cheeks of them, is thy abuse.

• Why should I Womens eyes for Chrystal take?
• Such poor invention burns in their low mind

Whose fire is wild, and doth not upward go

To praise, and on thee, Lord, some Ink bestow,

• Open the bones, and you shall nothing find

In the best face but filth, when, Lord, in thee

The beauty lies in the discovery.

Both poems take on traditions of secular love poetry by means of comparison, ultimately using the grandeur of God to frame erotic beauty and Venus’s livery as something that one day “Worms, may chance refuse” and that even the “best face” is but “filth” when the flesh is decayed. The nearly combative tone that Herbert employs in these early sonnets speaks towards what Helen Wilcox describes as Herbert’s desire that “every dimension of poetry should be brought into the active service of God” (Wilcox 2007, p. xxiii).

The most obvious dimension of poetry Herbert critiques in these early sonnets is the matter of the content. On the surface, Herbert’s question, “Why are not sonnets made of thee?” with thee functioning in reference to God, seems easily resolved by changing the topic. Rather than writing poems about the sting of Cupid’s arrow and the titillation of Venus’s love, the answer to young Herbert’s problem was to write more poems, specifically sonnets, where God is the focus of the content. The paradox of this solution is that such sonnets already existed; indeed, hundreds of sonnets were published and in circulation for at least fifteen years before Herbert penned his particular call to action. The most notable poetic volumes that can be understood as “sonnets made of thee” are those written by Henry Lock and Barabe Barnes. Lock (1593), often described as “the most prolific English religious sonneteer of the 1590’s”, wrote well over three hundred sonnets focused on God, with two hundred of that amount committed to the single volume, Sundry Christian Passions Contained in two hundred Sonnets. Barnabe (1595) imitates Lock’s prolific sonnet production in his own volume, A Divine Centurie of Spirituall Sonnets, with the two of them “account[ing] for more than half of the religious sonnets published in England during the 1590s” (McDowell 2019, p. 118).

Herbert’s omission of the hundreds of religious sonnets written by Lock and Barnes, among others, makes a space to propose that Herbert conceptualized the sonnet, specifically the sacred sonnet, to be something other than the work of previous poets. With such a bold assertion coming from such a young poet, it is easy to read Herbert’s claims as naive presumptions and self-absorbed hubris. And yet, there is something fundamentally different between the religious sonnets of the 1590s and Herbert’s sonnets scattered throughout The Temple. In studies that compare Sundry Christian Passions to The Temple, there is a distinct lack of interiority missing from Lok’s sonnets. In removing the secular content from the sonnet form, Lok and Barnes rely instead on popular scenes from the Bible to act as their poetic content. The approach becomes didactic, repetitive, and predictable, and as pointed out by Sean McDowell, “They tend to sound as if they were worshiping in public rather than suffering in private” (McDowell 2019, p. 119). Though appropriate in content, the sonnets of Lok and Barnes also fail to “on thee, Lord, some Ink bestow”.

Perhaps it is possible to understand why the sonnets of Lock and Barnes fail to measure up to Herbert’s expectations, despite their religious content, by focusing instead on Lok and Barnes’ treatment of the sonnet form. After all, Herbert specifically asks the question, “Why are not Sonnets made of thee?” In the titles of their volumes, Lock and Barnes specifically tell their readers that their spiritual content will be delivered as sonnets. While the literary history surrounding the sonnet form makes it impossible to know how a reader would have conceptualized the literary form mentioned in these titles, at the very least, the preface materials written by Lok and Barnes offer a glimpse into how they understood their chosen form. In the preface material to Sundry Christian Passions, Lock connects the sonnet form to the pragmatic reading or use of his volume. Lock writes:

As for the apt nature of Poetire, to delight, to contrive significantly in fewe words much matter, to pearce and penetrate affection of men, with the aptnesse thereof to helpe of memorie, I will not say much but for my deducing these passions and affections into Sonnets. It answereth best for the shortness, to the nature and common humor of men, who are either not long touched with so good motions, or by their wordly affairs not permitted to continue much reading.

(Lock 1593, [sig. A5r])

Even though Lock is writing poetry, he admits that he is not inherently invested in poetry’s ability to “delight” and “penetrate” the affections of men. This nonchalant dismissal of some of the defining characteristics of poetry works against arguments made to justify spiritual verse—including those made by key figures like Philip Sidney. For Lok, the aptness of the sonnet is that it is short and, therefore, convenient for busy readers. Rather than the poetic form being inherent to the spiritual content, the sonnet instead becomes an advertisement—a quick and easy way to access the spiritual content of the Bible—”to contrive significantly in fewe words much matter”. In Barnes’s preface, “To the fauourable and Christian Reader”, the sonnet is little more than the fourteen lines, described as “an hundreth Quatorzaines” that characterize the form (sig A3v). Lock’s utilitarian justification for using the sonnet form—that it is short and therefore convenient for busy readers—feels disconnected from the work Herbert expects the sonnet to do in his own poetry. Merely defined by their measurements, the sonnets of Sundry Christian Passions are made for the reader, clothed in the livery of prayer and meditation, but not “made of thee”, at least in the way Herbert seems to be imagining.

If sonnets are not simply “made” by their content, what exactly are they made of? We can start to answer this question by thinking about form. Turning to Herbert’s own sonnets as a base line, both the early sonnets sent to his mother and the fourteen individual sonnets scattered throughout The Temple maintain a highly constrained structure. As showcased in the two New Year’s sonnets, the poems closely adhere to an iambic pentameter line while using an ABAB, CDCD, EFF, EGG rhyme scheme, meaning that Herbert’s poem aligns with most of the formal characteristics George Gascoigne uses in “Certtayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or ryme in English” (1575) to distinguish the English sonnet from other poetic forms. Sonnets, according to Gascoigne, are poems “whiche are of fourtene lynes, every line conteyning ten syllables. The firste twelve do ryme in staves of four lines by crosse meetre, and the last two rhyming togither do conclude the whole” (Gascoigne 1575, [sig. U2r]). Herbert’s poem differs from this construction by invoking a style reminiscent of the Italian sonnet by divining the sestet—the last six lines—into groupings of three, though the classic English couplet, described by Gascoigne as “the last two rhyming togither”, concludes the poem. As demonstrated by the Gascoigne passage, sonnets carry with them the expectation of formal constraint. In other words, Gascoigne claims that the identity of a sonnet is found in its form rather than its content. To assert that sonnets are made by constraint is hardly nuanced within today’s critical landscape. Perhaps, then, questions worth asking are those most directly given voice by literary critic Richard Strier:

Why would anyone choose to write in as constrained and difficult a form as […] a sonnet—especially in English, which, as opposed to Italian, French, or Spanish, is a very rhyme-poor language? Within the constraints of metre, rhyme, and structure, and within such small compass, how could one say anything meaningful, and especially anything sincere, since all the formal constrains would surely make one’s language and sentiments horribly stilted and artificial?

(Strier 2014, pp. 73–74)

Strier’s inquiry, why would anyone choose the sonnet form, is precisely the question Herbert’s text invites readers to ask.

4. Forms of Devotion

Understanding the devotional significance of Herbert’s sonnets begins by understanding how The Temple functions as a volume of poetry, both thematically and formally. The Temple was published posthumously by Cambridge University printers Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel in 1633. The manuscript was prepared and presented for printing by Nicolas Ferrar—the spiritual leader of the Little Giddings community—who, according to Izaak Walton’s (1670) Life of Mr. George Herbert, was sent a manuscript containing Herbert’s sacred poems shortly before Herbert died. If Walton’s record is to be believed, a small volume of poetry was placed in Mr. Edward Duncon’s care by Herbert as he lay on his deathbed with the instruction to deliver the book to Ferrar. Walton records that Herbert requested:

Sir, I pray deliver this little Book to my dear brother Farrer [sic], and tell him, he shall find in it a picture of the many spiritual Conflicts that have past betwixt God and my Soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus my Master: in whose service I have now found perfect freedom; desire him to read it; and then if he can think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor Soul, let it be made publick: if not, let him burn it: for I and it, are less than the least of God’s mercies.4

Ferrar obviously saw the advantage of Herbert’s “little Book”. The manuscript was given the title of The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, and the volume saw both a first and second edition before the end of the year.

Perhaps informed by Herbert’s own assessment of his poetry as “a picture of the many spiritual Conflicts that have past betwixt God and my Soul”, prevailing opinions about the volume understand Herbert’s works to be associated with spiritual experience. For Joseph Summers, The Temple represents “The symbolic record, written by a poet, of a ‘typical’ Christian life within the Church” (Summers 1954, p. 86). Thematically, the volume offers to its readers a wide variety of symbolic spiritual experiences—some informed by physical spaces associated with religion, such as the poems “The Church-floor” and “The Windows”, with others informed by key events throughout the liturgical calendar, including poems titled, “Good Friday”, “Easter”, “Whitsunday”, “Christmas”, and “Lent”. Filled with confessions of both love and frustration, allusions to scripture, introspection, and calls for forgiveness, the progress depicted throughout the volume reaches the epitome of spiritual experience in the last poem in “The Church”—the central section that makes up the volume. In the poem, simply titled “Love”, the speaker enters into God’s grace through Love’s gentle invitation to “taste my meat”, an allusion to Communion despite the speaker’s initial doubts that they are “worthy to be here”.5

Formally, The Temple draws attention to the uniqueness of poetic invention. In Summers’ evaluation of the volume, he noted that The Temple employs one hundred and thirty-eight different combinations of rhyme and meter (Summers 1954, p. 148). When using the numbering consistent with the Bodleian manuscript, only fifteen rhyme and meter combinations are repeated throughout The Temple: two of the combinations account for the fifteen sonnets, while the remaining thirteen combinations are applied to only twenty-eight poems.6 Helen Wilcox, the most recent editor of Herbert’s devotional poetry, observes that not only does The Temple include sonnets, “but also prayers, medications, hymns, anagrams, allegories, and poems in forms made specifically to represent their subject” (Wilcox 2007, p. xxiii). When situated within the context of The Temple, the formal consistency demonstrated by Herbert’s sonnets contradicts the formal innovation associated with the remainder of the volume. The stark contrast between the formal variety throughout the rest of The Temple and Herbert’s fifteen sonnets frames them in relief, fifteen poems that formally group together and stand out.

On the surface, Herbert’s return to the sonnet form speaks to “a certain conservatism, a reversion to a well-worn and highly conventionalized form” (Ottenhoff 1979, p. 1). Within the historical context of the Reformation, conceptions of conventional forms, especially forms associated with worship, were cited by nonconformists to emphasize the need for religious change. Maintaining conventional forms of worship meant maintaining the empty and corrupt traditions of the past. Seventeenth-century essayist Arthur Newman defined such a person as “Hee that is holy in profession, but hollow in condition” (Newman 1607, [sig B4v]). When compared to the seemingly spontaneous poetic forms that make up the remainder of the volume, the fifteen sonnets have the potential to represent the very same hollow conditions reformers where keen to get rid of. Ultimately, claims of conservatism reveal a bias that views forms as empty containers. If the sonnet form is an empty container, then that same emptiness influences the meaning of the experience because the limits of the container (or form) prohibit authenticity and sincere expression.

Scholars interested in combatting claims of conservatism have defended Herbert’s sonnets by using arguments of innovation and experimentation. By being hypersensitive to the ways Herbert’s sonnets deviate from widespread sonneteering practices, scholars such as John Ottenhoff and Virginia Mollenkott have made arguments that claim Herbert’s sonnets “show a balanced exploitation of the freedoms of a strict verse form”, symbolically representing “freedom-within-submission which has been Herbert’s mature spiritual experience”.7 By assessing Herbert’s sonnet through poetic innovation, arguments made by Ottenhoff and Mollenkott, among others, seek to resolve the formal contradiction presented by the repeated use of the conventional sonnet form. In a volume dedicated to formal variety, scholarship that fixes attention on the formal variety of the sonnets thus adheres to the same formal investment represented by the rest of the volume. In other words, we are able to flatten the formal anomaly of the repeated form by emphasizing experimentation and innovation. By emphasizing the experimental nature of Herbert’s sonnets, these poems are able to formally fall in line with the innovative agendas represented by the rest of the volume.

Alternatively, by maintaining the sonnets’ status as a formal outlier throughout The Temple, we are specifically able to consider how a spiritual experience might be possible despite the lack of obvious experimentation or innovation. From a wide lens perspective, previous scholarship on Herbert’s sonnets frames formal innovation as a key characteristic of spiritual experience. In prior scholarship, the sonnet represents Herbert’s site of intervention, or as Sean McDowell has commented, the use of the sonnet throughout The Temple demonstrates Herbert’s efforts “to salvage the [form] from the service of profane love, to find other ways to change it with emotion, and in the process, explore emotions other than those predominating the Petrarchan mode” (McDowell 2019, p. 128). This type of scholarship tends to be interested in what Herbert can do for the sonnet form rather than what the sonnet can do for Herbert. By shifting the emphasis, focusing not on the ways Herbert changes the form but rather on the affordances of the form, Herbert’s sonnets have the potential to emphasize spiritual experience within convention rather than outside of it. I recognize that this claim shares similarities with Mollenkott’s “freedom-within-submission” argument, though I want to emphasis a key difference related to how one goes about seeking that experience. Given the dual nature of poetry—meaning being conveyed by both form and content—the nuance I am trying to emphasize represents one side—the other side—of the same coin. While other scholars have focused on innovation to uncover spiritual significance, my emphasis is on the affordance of constraint and convention. Rather than the content being the driving force of formal change, I am interested in the possibility of allowing the constrained form to inform one’s familiar understanding of spiritual content. The exchange moving from form to content rather than content to form hinges on a conceptual understanding that frames Herbert’s sonnets as deliberate because of their form—not in spite of it. Compared to the extensive formal variety that makes up the bulk of The Temple, Herbert’s return to the sonnet marks the form as a deliberate choice. When understood as a deliberate choice rather than a means of innovation, the sonnet affords a particular type of spiritual experience that cannot be understood without additional constraints.

5. Choosing Constraint

The significance of choosing the sonnet form and the spiritual experience it affords is most readily perceived through consideration of the sonnet “Redemption” and the proceeding poem, “Good Friday”. In the context of The Temple, these poems are often described as being part of a larger sequence that is thematically focused on Christ’s atoning sacrifice. Some of the notable poems in the sequence are the concrete shape poem “The Altar” mentioned at the beginning of this essay, “The Sacrifice”, the only poem in the volume that assumes Christ’s voice throughout the entirely of the verse, and “The Sinner”, the first sonnet of the volume.8 In the Williams manuscript—the oldest extant manuscript containing many, but not all, of the poems that would eventually make up The Temple—“Good Friday” and “Redemption” are specifically connected with the events of Christ’s crucifixion through the titles assigned to them. In the Williams manuscript, both the second half of “Good Friday” (lines 21–32) and “Redemption” were given the title “The Passion”, with the Passion poems separated from each other by the first half of “Good Friday” (Charles 1977). For the sake of this essay, I have included the poem in its 1633 printed form, though I have indicated the differences from the Williams manuscript along the side. “Good Friday” reads:

• O my chief good,

How shall I measure out thy bloud?

How shall I count what thee befell,

• And each grief tell?

• Shall I thy woes

Number according to thy foes?

Or, since one starre show’d thy first breath,

• Shall all thy death?

• Or shall each leaf,

Which falls in Autumne, score a grief?

Or cannot leaves, but fruit, be signe

• Of the true vine?

• Then let each houre

Of my whole life one grief devoure;

That thy distresse through all may runne.

• And be my sunne.

• Or rather let

My several sinnes their sorrows get;

That as each beast his cure thod know,

• Each sinne may so.

	[In the Williams Manuscript,
Since blood is fittest, Lord, to write	this section of the poem
Thy sorrows in, and bloudie fight;	used “The Passion” as its
My heart hath store, write there, where in	title, and was placed before
One box doth lie both ink and sinne:	the previous lines.]

• That when sinne spies so many foes,
• Thy whips, thy nails, thy wounds, thy woes,
• All come to lodge there, sinne may say,
• No room for me, and flie away.

• Sinne being gone, oh fill the place,
• And keep possession with thy grace;
• Lest sinne take courage and return,
• And all the writings blot and burn.9

The obvious difference in regard to tone, imagery, and stanza structure has frequently contributed to debates arguing for “Good Friday” to be understood as two separate poems.10 Leaning into the possibility of two poems, as indicated by the Williams manuscript, I invite us to consider the second half before the first—specifically parsing out how “Good Friday” relates to the sonnet form used for “Redemption”. Starting with the second half, the poem begins by invoking the notion of fit: “Since blood is fittest, Lord, to write”. Fit is often a term associated with poetry, the assumption being that the form should fit the content. However, as R. L. Colie reminds us, an exact fit “surely, is an illusion: no fit is ever exact and all similitudes are rough likenesses” (Colie 1963, p. 340). Part of the nature of poetry is to sand away some of that roughness and make things appear to be more than they are. Herbert, a poet known for testing the limits of fit as we have already seen in “The Altar”, seems to be unconcerned about the possible roughness of fit by boldly claiming blood is fittest to write.

Given the assertive confidence demonstrated in this first line, a reader should, at the very least, have a slight sense of skepticism regarding the poem’s fittest claims. The first definition of fit, drawing on the adjectival entry of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), points toward the ability to be “well adapted or suited to the conditions or circumstances of the case”, specifically “answering the purpose, proper or appropriate”.11 Fittest, in regard to answering the purpose, is only a slight semantic step away from answering the question. If the final three stanzas of “Good Friday” represent the fittest answer, then the title used in the Williams manuscript, “The Passion”, moves into focus as the “fit” topic in question. This practical model—religious questions focused on Christ and the fittest answers supplied in response—was the method used to educate individuals regarding “the principles of religion” and that “blessed light of Truth” (Bourne 1646, [sig. A6v]). Questioning and answering, otherwise known as catechizing, was an important part of religious education throughout both the Tudor and Stuart periods, though not without certain anxieties.12 On the title page of A light from Christ, author and catechizer Immanual Bourne describes his text as being “Profitable for Parents to instruct their Families. By way of Catechism or Dialogue: not to Answer verbatim, or by wrote (as young Children) but each one according to his own sence [sic.] and understanding of the QUESTION” (Bourne 1646, title page). Perhaps a little too faithful to the question-and-answer structure, Bourne concludes the volume’s preface by catechizing:

Quest. How may we make use of this the Catechismel, or the lesser to best profit of private families or others?

First, the Master, or some one in the Family may read the Question; and then first every one in order declare their knowledge, or shew their ignorance and inability to answer.

Secondly, the Master or any other may Reade the Answer in the Booke, and let every one in order render the Answer again, not verbatim word by word, but as hee or shee understands the Question.

Thirdly, let this be practized untill every one is able to give the sence of the Answer, onely upon Reading of the Question, without Reading the Answer.

(Bourne 1646, [sig, ¶ ¶3r].emphasis in original)

As evidenced in both passages, Bourne instructs that verbatim answers are to be avoided. Supplying word for word answers without a personal sense of the principle being discussed is the equivalent to the supposedly empty forms of worship so harshly criticized by the nonconformists mentioned earlier. The crux of catechizing is that while the text provides the fittest response, participants are tasked with breaking away from the prescribed answers to instead form their own responses within the doctrinal limits. If the title used in the Williams manuscript represents the topic in question, and the final three stanzas of ‘Good Friday” are framed as the response, the question remaining is whether or not these lines are a verbatim response drawn from the catechism or the sense of the answer drawn from the heart. Luckily for us, both the form and content of Herbert’s verse help provide the answer.

In terms of the content, the strongest theme used throughout the last three stanzas of “Good Friday” is the image of God writing on the heart. By offering their heart as both the space (write there) and the ink for writing, the speaker demonstrates one of the principal objectives of catechizing. As demonstrated in Bourne’s volume, question ten of the twelfth Classis, or the company of questions, asks:

But how doth Christ, this great Prophet of his Church, reveal God the Father, and his good will to poor sinners, that they may know God, and Christ, and believe, and be converted, and be saved?

And the answer:

Ans. Christ in the ordinary way, doth reveal this, outwardly by the Preaching of the Word, and Catechizing, and inwardly by the Spirit, communicated in the Gospel, teaching and writing the truth of God, according to his Covenant of Grace, in the hearts of his children.

(Bourne 1646, {sig. I7v})

The association between catechizing and writing on the heart, as demonstrated by this answer, is understood to be a direct result of the process. If the question-and-answer structure is employed correctly, then the spirit of God will write the truth of God in the hearts of his children. According to Herbert’s verse, writing on the heart is particularly advantageous because the heart is also the location of sin: “when sinne spies so many foes, / Thy whips, thy nails, thy wounds, thy woes, / All come to lodge there, sinne may say, / No room for me, and flie away”. When confronted with the Covenant of Grace, through one’s ability “by faith” and “the spiritual eyes of the soul, to behold and see the natural body of Christ crucified”—the whips, nails, wounds, and woes—sin leaves the heart.13 The purification through the new covenant, signified by Christ’s crucifixion, restores the law written in the hearts of Adam and Eve in their creation and was subsequently “blotted by the fall”.14 The final lines of the poem—Lest sinne take courage and return, / And all the writings blot and burn—speaks towards a return to original sin. Adam and Eve, despite having God’s covenant written in their hearts, betrayed that trust by falling, blotting out God’s commands, and replacing them with their sins.

Not only does Herbert’s verse demonstrate keen connections to major elements of catechism education, but the form of the verse also speaks towards the question-and-answer structure, specifically in relation to learning the answer. In regard to form, the last three stanzas of “Good Friday” are drastically different from the first twenty lines, especially in terms of meter. Unlike the “cross-shaped stanzas” that come before, the last three stanzas, the fit answer to the William manuscript’s implied question, are perfectly balanced using iambic terameter (Wilcox 2007, p. 126). One of the affordances of iambic tetrameter is that it gives each line a bouncy, fluid momentum. This driving meter is reminiscent of the iambic tetrameter used throughout The Whole Book of Psalms collected into English meter, a metrical translation of the Book of Psalms that was widely used throughout early modern England for congregational psalm singing. The simple meter made the verse easier to sing, where the stress of the line aligned with a 4/4-time signature that allotted four beats per measure, meaning that whole congregations were able to participate in worship services despite lacking any significant musical training. Furthermore, the simple rhymes made the psalms easier to remember and memorize (Zim 1987, p. 117). To aid in memorization, the metrical psalms sung by congregations also relied on repeated words and phrases to ensure those worshiping did not lose track of the sense of the psalm. Repetition is featured prominently throughout Herbert’s verse, with the lines moving forward by returning to sin: one box doth lie both ink and sinne…when sinne spies so many foes… there sinne may say…Sinne being gone …. Lest sinne take courage (lines 24, 25, 27, 29 and 31). Along with the rhyming couplets found at the end of each line, repetition acts as a mnemonic device that ensures that the sense of the verse remains in the mind of the participant.

Framing the second half of “Good Friday” as the answer to the catechism gains significance whenrecontextualized alongside thefirst half of the poem, as organized in the Williams manuscript. Seemingly aware of the need to give a response to “The Passion” while avoiding a verbatim answer, the speaker of the first half of “Good Friday” questions:

• O my chief good,

How shall I measure out thy bloud?

How shall I count what thee befell,

• And each grief tell?

• Shall I thy woes

Number according to thy foes?

Or, since one starre show’d thy first breath,

• Shall all thy death?

• Or shall each leaf,

Which falls in Autumne, score a grief?

Or cannot leaves, but fruit, be signe

• Of the true vine?

Noted by the added emphasis, the verse expresses a particular uncertainty regarding how to recount and how to provide the proper or fit description of the events that took place on Good Friday. This portion of the poem is less concerned with learning the elements of Christ’s crucifixion but is rather about discovering how to approach them through the means of personal devotion. The poem’s speaker repeatedly asks, “How shall I” measure, count, and form an individual relationship with the events of Christ’s death. The role of the first-person pronoun within these questions transforms the general information about Christ’s Passion into an action that must be reconciled through the means of individual measuring and counting—an action that is consistent with the ultimate goal described by Bourne in the preface to his catechism (Bourne 1646, [sig. I7v]). If, as is encouraged by the organization of the Williams manuscript, the latter half of “Good Friday” is representative of the answer provided by the catechism, then this first half of the poem reveals an individual’s struggle in finding their own form of the answer.

In following the organizational structure provided by the Williams manuscript, the second Passion poem, the sonnet retitled “Redemption” in the 1633 print edition, becomes the third and final part of the speaker’s catechism experience. Drawing from the half of “Good Friday”, “How shall I measure?” And “How shall I count?” are both questions that carry particular resonance with poetry, specifically highly constrained and notably formal poetry. The unique nature of these questions, when informed by the importance of forming individual answers within the catechism model, is that questions of form are not often associated with questions of sense. The sense of the answer—the objective mentioned on the title page of A Light from Christ—is an invitation for the catechism participant to abstract meaning from the answers provided and to “ultimately discard the material transmission” provided by the structure (Hamilton 2018, p. 6). And yet, the speaker of “Good Friday” demonstrates a concerted effort to measure their account of the Passion, which leads to the carefully measured and meticulously counted sonnet form. Given the speaker’s concern with form and poetics, the question on the surface mirrors Richard Strier’s question from earlier: Why choose a sonnet? The poem reads:

• Redemption.
• Having been tenant long to a rich Lord,

Not thriving, I resolved to be bold,

And make a suit unto him, to afford

• A new small-rented lease, and cancel th’ old.
• In heaven at his manour I him sought:

They told me there, that he was lately gone

About some land, which he had dearly bought

• Long since on earth, to take possession.
• I straight return’d, and knowing his great birth,

Sought him accordingly in great resorts;

In Cities, theatres, gardens, parks, and courts:

• At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth

Of theeves and murderers: there I him espied,

Who straight, Your suit is granted, said & died.15

“Redemption” has amassed a significant amount of scholarly attention as one of Herbert’s most popular poems. Structurally, the poem’s fourteen-line constraint limits the length of the answer that the participant is able to provide. Additionally, the added measures associated with meter and rhyme ensure that the speaker must deliberately choose how Christ’s Passion is presented. The sonnet begins, “Having been tenant long to a rich Lord”, poet-persona “resolve[s] to be bold, / And make a suit unto him” for “a new small-rented lease, and cancel th’ old” (1–4). The speaker of the sonnet expects to find their Lord in the formal, material places associated with the Lord’s “great birth” (9). This “form” leads the speaker to believe that his landlord will be “In heaven at his manour” (5).16 The Lord, however, isn’t there, so the tenant tries again, looking in “great resorts, / In cities, theaters, gardens, parks, and courts” (10–11). The tension created by the supposed fit between form and content leads the speaker of the poem to find the Lord unexpectedly. Challenging the sonnet’s convention of withholding grace, the speaker at the end of the poem receives exactly what they want, “Your suit is granted”, but possibly without the expected degree of satisfaction because the line concludes “said & died” (14). As described by Mollenkott, we, similar to the speaker of the poem, “are left staring at the crucified Christ, grappling with the realization that He has answered our need even before we have had the opportunity to tell Him about it” (Mollenkott 1973, p. 266). On the one hand, the constraints of the sonnet’s form seem to cut off any sense of resolution with Christ—the speaker’s suit for a new lease, glossed by Wilcox as a desire for a better relationship with the Lord, never even leaves their mouth (Wilcox 2007, p. 113). On the other hand, the constrained form speaks to the possibility of the Lord being more attuned and aware of the speaker’s desires than even the speaker, consenting to their suit in exchange for nothing in return.

The paradox of choice, of choosing the constrains of the sonnet form, affords the speaker, and by extension, the reader, the benefit of an experience. As a highly constrained form, the sonnet draws attention to the artifice of language and a poem’s ability to be more than it seems. More than just referring to Christ’s Passion, the poetics of “Redemption” become the experience of God’s grace—a personal experience that continues to be available to the speaker/reader of the poem. Poetry, as an experience, is largely bound up in what Roland Green describes as the ritual and the fictional dimensions of poetry. As the driving feature of this sonnet’s particular narrative, the fictional dimension of lyric affords the speaker the opportunity to approach the crucifixion from a different perspective. In the fictional narrative of the sonnet, we are able to enter into “an alternate world, and yet that alternate world is understood and interpreted through the shared utterance—the ritual—of the outside world” (Greene 1990, pp. 20–22). For both the speaker and the reader of “Redemption”, Christ’s Passion and the gift of his grace are always perpetually present. Upon each reading, the speaker of the poem ritualistically returns to the moment of discovery with the process of that discovery supported by the fictional landscape of the poem. Grace is always given. And limited by the constraints of the form, grace is always given freely. If the content of “Redemption” presents the gift of God’s Passion in a reasonable way, then the form of “Redemption” presents the gift of God’s Passion in a revelatory way, a revelation to the heart.

6. Something Understood

In post-Reformation England, being a formalist was not considered to be a good thing. The accusation was directly tied to perceptions of religious and spiritual experience, namely that you demonstrated the “form” of religion, but you lacked any real spiritual experience. Accusations of passivity accompanied those of formal devotion, with the accusers claiming that external forms allowed individuals to simply go through the motions of religious life without ever establishing a real conviction. Outward expressions of faithfulness beyond Bible reading indicated a commitment to false traditions and meaningless constraints. But, as demonstrated by this essay, not all constraints are meaningless, and not all forms are passive. The paradox illustrated by Herbert’s sonnets is that by choosing the limits established by the poetic form, Herbert is able to offer to his readers an experience with redemption, prayer, and obedience that transcends one’s expectations. When deliberately chosen, constraints afford a sacred space for spiritual experience.

Ultimately, the implications of this study and the methodological approach I have used throughout this essay meet at a crossroads between literary studies and spiritual studies. From an institutional perspective, I am a literary critic. I have been trained as such, and I train my own students to think in similar ways. While it is tempting to lean into literary studies that allow my lived spirituality to exist silently on the sidelines, I know that I can never truly escape the questions that enliven my soul. I study poetry because I am looking for something. Something that is ultimately much greater than I can fathom. But if there is space for those questions to surface, even a space as small and insignificant as a fourteen-line sonnet, then the true implications of my work will become so much more than I ever imagined.

“Poems are not, as many people think, feelings”, writes poet and novelist, Rainer Maria Rilke, “—they are experiences”. To this, Mark S. Burrows adds, [“This does not] mean that poems refer to experiences, which they surely do, but that poems are experiences” (Burrows 2023, p. 270). In true self-implicating fashion, I began this essay by voicing my interest in the dual nature of poetry as a conceptual model for trying to understand spiritual experience. In turning to the formal investments that characterize Herbert’s verse, it has been my intention to demonstrate how convention can facilitate an experience with grace when that convention is deliberately chosen. We have seen how careful attention to poetic form transformed a potentially institutionalized catechism answer into a carefully constructed and continual experience with grace. In this final section, I would like to offer for consideration two additional sonnets that I find both extremely difficult and simply beautiful. Although my literary training encourages me to scrutinize the inner workings of these poems, I find that the more I try to understand them, the less I am able to express the significance of their meaning. As a result, this last section is less concerned with presenting a particular argument about the sonnets and more interested in experiencing them. My hope is that by being transparent, in the very least, my admiration for these poems and the significant meaning they hold for me will be conveyed.

I will begin by thinking about form. Throughout this essay, form has featured prominently as an organizing principle. I have tried to define form, to compare form to other instances, and to approach form as a deliberate choice. Here, the form that matters most is my own. My individuality. My weaknesses and shortcomings. My longing for a connection with the Divine. I see this form of myself most clearly in the fourteen-line structure of “The Holdfast”. The sonnet reads:

• I threatened to observe the strict degree

Of my dear God with all my power & might.

But I was told by one, it could not be,

• Yet I might trust in God to be my light.
• Then will I trust, said I, in him alone.

Nay, ev’n to trust in him, was also his:

We must confess, that nothing is our own.

• Then I confess that he my succour is:
• But to have nought is ours, not to confesse

That we have nought. I stood amaze’d at this,

Much troubled, till I heard a friend expresse,

• That all things were more ours by being his.

What Adam had, and forfeited for all,

Christ keepeth now, who cannot fail or fall (Wilcox 2007, p. 499).

When I read this sonnet, I cannot help but feel a sense of fellowship with the speaker. Paradoxically, the more the speaker attempts to assert spiritual commitments, the more that reality seems to avoid them. While obviously fervent in their desires to establish a relationship with God, each effort proposed by the speaker to enact that relationship, to hold fast to God, is turned on its head, ultimately leaving the speaker with nothing. Strictly in terms of content, scholars have focused on this poem as an example of Herbert’s Calvinist influences by connecting the speaker’s inability to do or say anything to establish a relationship with God to the principles of predestination.

While the principles of predestination speak towards an overall theme of the poem, I would like to zoom in on the moments that point toward a desire for an external form or measurement of devotion. The speaker begins, “I threatened to observe the strict degree/Of my dear God with all my power & might” (1–2). Despite the declarative nature of these lines, the meaning of the speaker’s words is hardly straightforward. Is the speaker’s threat to observe the strict degree one that is motivated out of frustration or out of desperation? For whom is this threat intended? If we are to understand the “strict degree” as alluding to the first and great commandment—Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all they soul and with all they might (Deuteronomy 6.5)—how does one go about measuring the heart, soul, and might? Just as the emotional tone of the outburst (is it fair to call these lines an outburst?) speaks toward two possible interpretations, the word observe also invokes two related, though different, meanings. On the one hand, observation speaks about the obligation to perform a particular action. Observing is connected with complying and taking part. On the other hand, to observe is to notice or perceive action that affords attentiveness while simultaneously allowing the observer to maintain a certain distance from the subject. The implications of this type of threat to observe also frames the speaker as a judge—an outside observer who takes note of other people’s commitment to God’s command; but surely, this cannot be what the poem is trying to reveal.

The potential duality of the speaker’s tone and intention speaks towards a possible duality of spiritual expression. Is a spiritual experience characterized by internal perception, requiring no formal actions, or is a spiritual experience characterized by taking part and participating? The speaker of the poem does not seem to know, and the poem begins to feel like it is running away with itself as the speaker tries to find the right answer. Ultimately, the speaker is so involved with discovering the right way to imagine a relationship with God—whether observing, trusting, or confessing—that the speaker seems to lose track of what they proposed to do in the first place, that is, choosing to love God.

Constantly being corrected, the speaker seems to stumble through their proposed forms of worship without recognizing the form of the poem. In true sonnet form, the eight lines of the octave compound upon themselves, building up to the eventual turn, the sonnet’s volta: “That we have nought, I stood amaze’d at this” (9–10). For the first time in the poem, the speaker finally stops. As a conventional feature of the sonnet form, the volta often signified a turn towards new understanding, specifically in regard to the beloved. In this sonnet, the characteristic turn affords a space for the speaker to stop speaking and, instead, start listening: “I stood amaze’d at this, / Much troubled, till I heard a friend express” (9–10). The constraints of the form are able to do what the content could not— namely, facilitate a “conversation…with the divine” (Hopler 2013, pp. xxi–xxii).

The speaking voice that concludes the rest of the poem is assigned the status of a friend. And yet, the poem gives no further indication of what that friendship means. Constrained by the fourteen-line form, we never hear the voice of the first speaker again. We know that they hear the words of the friend, but just as the speaker is unable to measure devotion in the first eight lines, we, as the readers, are unable to measure how the speaker receives Christ’s grace. In the final silences of the sonnet, love, devotion, and commitment to God become something that the speaker has to work out internally. Regardless of the speaker’s response to the statement about Christ, their response cannot be corrected. Whether or not the speaker accepts Christ is part of the conversation that we, as readers, do not have access to. Whatever experience follows is one that only God can observe.

Herbert’s most obvious attempt in The Temple to define a conversation with God is the sonnet “Prayer”. As one of The Temple’s most anthologized poems, “Prayer” stands out in recent criticism as one of Herbert’s finest poems (Di Cesare 1981, p. 325). Characterized by the rhetorical systrophe form—an accumulation of definitions all focused on a single idea—the sonnet unfolds a series of images, scenarios, and descriptions that each labor to manifest the phenomenon of prayer without ever asserting an explicit definition. While the speaker of “The Holdfast” asserts action, “I threatened to observe the strict decree”, and is rebuffed for their confidence, the speaker of “Prayer” lacks action and yet concludes with “something understood”.17 The poem reads:

• Prayer.
• Prayer the Churches banquet, Angels age,

Gods breath in man returning to his birth,

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

• The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth.
• Engine against the th’ Almightie, sinners towre,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing speare,

The six-daies world transposing in an houre,

• A kinde of tune, which all thinks heare and fear;
• Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,

Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,

Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,

• The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bels beyond the starres heard, the souls bloud,

The land of spices; something understood.

Importantly, prayer is not “something understood” because the speaker of the sonnet eventually lists the “right” definition. While the systrophe structure encourages the reader to assume a clear definition will be uncovered, the sonnet never asserts one meaning over the rest. Contrasted with “The Holdfast”, if the previous sonnet was frantically moving through content trying to find the right response, “Prayer” seems content with presenting one idea at a time. Characterized by miniature caesurae due to the list-like nature of the lines, the poem ensures that no one idea moves too quickly. The formal constraints that limit the meter and rhyme scheme and number of lines also serve to limit the distractions of the outside world. The constrains of this sonnet testify to St. Paul’s words to the Romans: “For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words”.18 In this poem, prayer becomes deeper than any one definition listed. More than simply forming the right words, the words of the poem deepen our souls. The thunder of the storm of life reverses to silence. The ordinary becomes heavenly, and church bells ring beyond the stars.

The temptation associated with this sonnet is to set limits, to take each proposed idea and work through them, like a puzzle, until a reasonable explanation has been reached. That explanation would default to the sense of the idea associated with prayer, ultimately disregarding the original idea as a metaphor. And yet, regardless of how many times I read or teach this sonnet, I find myself drawn to sitting in the poem—to sit with God’s breath, to sit with a paraphrased soul, to sit in peace and joy, and love and bliss. The sonnet is prayer. Not because of what it says but simply because of what it is. It is something. Something set apart from the every day, something chosen, something that speaks to the soul, and ultimately, something understood.