![]() He turns to me and, taking bread and wine, ![]() The same spear-pierced and always-healing heart. The same quick eyes, the same wry, welcome smile, Love took George Herbert’s hand and now takes mine, You might like to re-read Herbert’s poem before you read mine!Īs always you can hear me read the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button or the title. ‘Love Bade me welcome’ says Herbert, and so in my poem I create an archway through which my reader and I can walk to receive that welcome and respond to it, perhaps a little shyly, a little hesitantly, as Herbert did. So in responding to the word Love in my own sequence, it seemed to me that the only thing I could do was to begin with Herbert’s poem, and simply join in the moment of welcome with which it opens. ![]() After Herbert’s masterpiece Love (III) with which he ends his great sequence The Temple, there is, in one sense, nothing more to be said. Yesterday’s sonnet reflected on joy, and today it is the turn of love.Īny poet responding to Herbert’s use of the word Love, is immediately confronted by the fact that Herbert himself has written perhaps the greatest ever poem on the Divine Love that meets us in Christ, a poem in which Christ is simply named Love. Softness and peace and joy and love and bliss On our Lenten Journey through Herbert’s poem Prayer, using the sonnets in my new book After Prayer, we continue Herbert’s beautiful ascent back into joy, a joy which is all the more secure and real because it has passed through and transmuted sorrow. ![]()
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