Herbert's "Paradise"

Abstract

Herbert's "Paradise" by Kathleen M. Swaim The variety of George Herbert's poetic experimentation is truly remarkable, and occurs generally within the guidelines of I Corinthians 14:26: "Let all things be done unto edifying." The "things" there spoken of include individual revelations and interpretations as well as texts and voices. Among the range of poetic forms with which Herbert experimented occur several lyrics which might be given the label "ecchoing song," to borrow a phrase from Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress." In particular at present I am concerned with the varied artistic strategies and themes of Herbert's "Paradise," a poem that is often omitted from full-scale studies of Herbert's poetry but that has received a number of specialized commentaries. Specifically, Herbert's "Paradise" falls within Joseph Summers' category of "Hieroglyphics": it is "a figure, device, or sign having some hidden meaning; a secret or enigmatical symbol; an emblem." For Herbert this means constructing the whole poem so that its form images its subject and thus reinforces the spiritual message for those who are willing to perform an act of Protestant interpretive meditation upon this text. Such a pattern poem is, as Summers observes, a dangerous form.1 "Paradise" is a pruning poem; its defining device or hinge is rather simply, though interestingly typographic: I Blesse thee, Lord, because I GROW Among thy trees, which in a ROW To thee both fruit and order OW. What open force, or hidden CHARM Can blast my fruit, or bring me HARM, While the inclosure is thine ARM? 19 Kathleen M. Swaim Inclose me still for feare I START. Be to mee rather sharp and TART, Then let me want thy hand & ART. When thou dost greater judgements SPARE, And with thy knife but prune and PARE, Ev'n fruitfull trees more fruitful! ARE. Such sharpnes shows the sweetest FREND: Such cuttings rather heal then REND: And such beginnings touch their END.2 Capitalization and orthographic alignment of the affected final riming words of each stanza call attention to ways in which the artistry is essentially interconnected to the poem's spiritual theme. The final monosyllabic word of each 3-line stanza progressively loses consonants as the stanza unfolds, an artistic procedure which manifests thematic modulations of husbandry predominantly targetted upon the tree, the fruit, and the gardener's art. Such modulations, which are also from self to God, are generally characteristic of Herbert's art. Although these artistic techniques have received illuminating, though scattered critical attention, the poem's inclusive structural design has not been fully attended to, perhaps because in "Paradise" the Herbertian "self" is reconstituted rather than annihilated or "self-consumed." The structural design accounts for echoes between as much as within stanzaic units, leads to the comprehensive cyclical resolution of the Alpha-Omega of the final line, and thus also brings the reader back from a completion of the experience of reading the poem to a new understanding of the meaning of the poem's title. A review of some of the most developed commentary on "Paradise" will place thematic and artistic issues in perspective. Pruning in Herbert's "Paradise" is a matter of imagery and theme as well as form or genre. In her discussion of Protestant emblematics in Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Relgious Lyric, Barbara K. Lewalski particularly commends Herbert's "Paradise" as "the most remarkable poetic embodiment " of the device of "pruning or training a vine or tree to 20 HERBERTS "PARADISE" control or enhance its growth," of lopping off letters from successive riming words in "emblem-like representation of God's pruning, to produce in the speaker better fruit."3 Such emblematics of cultivation interpret John 15:1-2: I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in methat beareth not fruit, he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. (Authorized Version) Speaking similarly to his disciples, Christ says in Matthew 15:13: "Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up." Pruning particularly describes stanzas 1. 2, and 4 in which a content and imagery of husbandry are...

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