In calling attention to Herbert's ability to shape a poem as a whole, we may claim for him a high degree of originality. Little had been done in this kind before. Our early lyric poetry is more remarkable for vividness than for form. Its writers feel keenly and speak daringly. By some means or other they usually succeed in stirring in their reader's heart feelings similar to their own. But not often do they show that sense of order and coherence which is expected in every other species of fine art. Perhaps words are easier material than paint, stone, or sound, and lend themselves more readily to caprice. Of course without a certain sequence no lyric could picture a poet's feeling. Near the beginning the occasion of the feeling is announced; then follow its manifestations; and at the close it is usually connected in some way with action, resolve, or judgment. Such an emotional scheme is often unfolded with much delicacy and evenness in the songs of Campion, and in both the songs and sonnets of Sidney and Shakespeare.

But these are vague divisions, the second especially so. They do not alone give firmness of form. They make poetic writing rather than finished poems. Stirred by some passion, real or imaginary, the poet begins to write, pours forth his feeling until the supply, or the reader, is exhausted, and then stops. He has no predetermined beginning, middle, and end. Part with part has no private amitie. The place and amount of each portion is fixed by no plan of the whole, but rather by the waywardness of the writer. In most early lyrics, even the best, stanzas might be omitted, added, or transposed, without considerable damage. Each stands pretty much

by itself. In the two stanzas of Ben Jonson's stirring song, Drink to me only with thine eyes, neither is necessary to the other. Those of his Queen and huntress chaste and fair might about as well have taken any other order. This is the more remarkable because into the drama Jonson carried form in much the same conscious way that Herbert carried it into lyric poetry. But if in the early lyrists the desire for closely-knitted structure is slight, it is feebler still in the writers of reflective verse. These men wander wherever thought or a good phrase leads, and are rarely restrained by any compacted plan. In short, we read most of the early poetry for the sake of splendid bursts, vigorous stanzas, pithy lines. To obtain these, we willingly pass through much that is formless and uninteresting. Seldom do we get singleness of impression. Sidney, in his Defense of Poesy, complained of the poets of his day that their 'matter is quodlibet,' which they never marshal 'into any assured rank,' so that 'the readers cannot tell where to find themselves.' Until Herbert appeared, unity of structure was little regarded.

To such articulated structure Herbert devoted himself, and what he accomplished forms one of his two considerable contributions to English poetry. In his pages we see for the first time a great body of lyrics in which the matter and the form are at one. Impulsive and ardent though Herbert seems, he holds himself like a true artist responsive to his shaping theme. Not that he acquires power of this sort at once, or has it always. The ChurchPorch is loose, and in many of the ecclesiastical poems of his Cambridge years, there is only such general structure

as springs from announced theme, emotional development, and moral ending. But the demand for form is deep in him, and more and more he puts himself at its service. In something like a quarter of his work he attains a solidity of structure hitherto unknown. That his achievements in this field exercised little influence over his immediate successors is true, and surprising. But he set the most difficult of examples. Strong form is not catching. Only a man of energy and restraint is capable of it. Other qualities, too, of Herbert's style obscured his form. So rich is he in suggestion, so intellectually difficult, so tender in religious appeal, that attention is easily withdrawn from his structure, and becomes fixed on details. Whatever the cause, the poets who follow him, and are most affected by his invention of the religious love-lyric, have small regard for his second invention-structural plan. C. Harvey, Vaughan, Crashaw, Traherne, are conspicuously lacking in restraint. They do not appear to notice the artistic weaving of Herbert's verse, which has brought it through the rough usage of nearly three centuries, while their own often more brilliant work now lies largely neglected. Even to-day few think of Herbert as one of our pioneers in poetic structure.

Briefly to present the evidence for this solidity of form is not easy. The point to be proved is not that Herbert exercised remarkable skill in building certain poems. Occasional fine structure was not unknown before. What Herbert did was to vindicate unity of design as a working factor of poetry. He showed how by its use much may be said in little. He made it plain that any theme, if fully and economically embodied, will not

lack interest. It is therefore the frequency of his work in this kind which I wish to show. This I think I can do most effectively by dividing his one hundred and sixty-nine poems into four groups, according to the prevalence in them of the principle of form. There appear to be fifty-eight in which there is no wandering from a predetermined plan.1

Among Herbert's poems there is one called Hope, which may be taken as a fair specimen of the difficulties of his verse, with its conceits, its condensation and ellipses of thought, where spontaneity and reality seem to be overshadowed by ingenuity. And yet beneath these outward signs there runs the sad intensity of passion. The poem is here given, with Mr. Palmer's interpretation. . . .

HOPE

I gave to Hope a watch of mine; but he
An anchor gave to me.

Then an old prayer book I did present;
And he an optick sent.

With that I gave a viall full of tears;

But he a few green eares.

Ah Loyterer! I 'le no more, no more I 'le bring.
I did expect a ring.

Mr. Palmer connects the poem with the contradictions of love, a constant subject with Herbert. His lines might have been called 'The Weariness of Hope': 'To Love I gave my time, prayers, and tears; serving Love long, and getting small return, I remind him of time passing, prayers offered, tears shed; still he gives only hopes, visions, immature fruit; I despair.' Translating into

1 Palmer, Life and Works of George Herbert 1. 138-142.

abstract terms Herbert's imagery of things, the sequence

of his thought might be represented thus:

To Love I said: 'Hast thou forgotten Time?'

'Time counts for naught with Love, for Love is Hope.'

But I prayed still the prayer I ever prayed.

'Look far away,' said Love, 'not on things near.' I wept. 'Nay, here and now is fruit,' he said. 'Unripe indeed.' 'Why such delay?' cried I. 'Give all or none ! '1

VIII. GEORGE HERBERT: LOVE UNKNOWN

[This is the only poem in which Herbert professes to speak with a friend; and the friend is but another mood of Herbert himself (line 11).' — Palmer. The structure of the poem is obvious.]

Dear Friend, sit down; the tale is long and sad; And in my faintings I presume your love

Will more comply than help. A Lord I had,
And have, of whom some grounds which may improve
I hold for two lives, and both lives in me.

To him I brought a dish of fruit one day,
And in the middle placed my heart. But he
(I sigh to say)

Looked on a servant who did know his eye
Better than you know me, or (which is one)
Than I myself. The servant instantly,

Quitting the fruit, seized on my heart alone
And threw it in a font wherein did fall

A stream of blood which issued from the side

Of a great rock. I well remember all

And have good cause. There it was dipped and dyed,

1 A. V. G. Allen, Palmer's Herbert in the Atlantic Monthly 97. 97.