Logos Virtual Library: George Herbert: The Temple: The Church: The Crosse

George Herbert

George Herbert (1593-1633)

The Temple

The Crosse

What is this strange and uncouth thing?

To make me sigh, and seek, and faint, and die,

Untill I had some place, where I might sing,
And serve thee; and not onely I,

But all my wealth, and familie might combine

To set thy honour up, as our designe.

And then when after much delay,

Much wrastling, many a combate, this deare end,

So much desir’d, is giv’n, to take away
My power to serve thee; to unbend

All my abilities, my designes confound,

And lay my threatnings bleeding on the ground.

One ague dwelleth in my bones,

Another in my soul (the memorie

What I would do for thee, if once my grones
Could be allow’d for harmonie)

I am in all a weak disabled thing,

Save in the sight thereof, where strength doth sting.

Besides, things sort not to my will,

Ev’n when my will doth studie thy renown:

Thou turnest th’ edge of all things on me still,
Taking me up to throw me down:

So that, ev’n when my hopes seem to be sped,

I am to grief alive, to them as dead.

To have my aim, and yet to be

Farther from it then when I bent my bow;

To make my hopes my torture, and the fee
Of all my woes another wo,

Is in the midst of delicates to need,

And ev’n in Paradise to be a weed.

Ah my deare Father, ease my smart!

These contrarieties crush me: these crosse actions

Doe winde a rope about, and cut my heart:
And yet since these thy contradictions

Are properly a crosse felt by thy sonne,

With but foure words, my words, Thy will be done.