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

George Herbert

George Herbert (1593-1633)

The Temple

The Banquet

Welcome sweet and sacred cheer,

Welcome deare;
With me, in me, live and dwell:
For thy neatnesse passeth sight,

Thy delight
Passeth tongue to taste or tell.

O what sweetnesse from the bowl

Fills my soul,
Such as is, and makes divine!
Is some starre (fled from the sphere)

Melted there,
As we sugar melt in wine?

Or hath sweetnesse in the bread

Made a head
To subdue the smell of sinne;
Flowers, and gummes, and powders giving

All their living,
Lest the enemie should winne?

Doubtlesse, neither starre nor flower

Hath the power
Such a sweetnesse to impart:
Onely God, who gives perfumes,

Flesh assumes,
And with it perfumes my heart.

But as Pomanders and wood

Still are good,
Yet being bruis’d are better sented:
God, to show how farre his love

Could improve,
Here, as broken, is presented.

When I had forgot my birth,

And on earth
In delights of earth was drown’d;
God took bloud, and needs would be

Spilt with me,
And so found me on the ground.

Having rais’d me to look up,

In a cup
Sweetly he doth meet my taste.
But I still being low and short,

Farre from court,
Wine becomes a wing at last.

For with it alone I flie

To the skie:
Where I wipe mine eyes, and see
What I seek, for what I sue;

Him I view,
Who hath done so much for me.

Let the wonder of this pitie

Be my dittie,
And take up my lines and life:
Hearken under pain of death,

Hands and breath;
Strive in this, and love the strife.