When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
Let us, said he, pour on him all we can.
Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,
Contract into a span.
So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.
For if I should, said he,
Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
So both should losers be.
Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.
HERBERT could have used the account of creation in the book of Genesis. Instead, he draws his own picture of God with a great glass of blessings which he wants to pour into humanity. I think of this not as a drinking glass, but as a great glass bowl full of fruit. From this glass flow all the goods we covet in life. Herbert is not a world-denier. He recognises that these are good things. Only one gift is withheld: peace of mind.
This is because if human beings had all they wanted of material goods, it would be all too easy for them to rest content with these. So, God lets humanity keep all the blessings of life, except one, so that if we do not turn to God out of gratitude, we will at least turn to him in our discontent.
The word “pulley” is not actually mentioned in the verse. The image called to mind is of a rope going round a pulley with a bucket at each end. A bucket of rubble goes down and the other bucket goes up. If the heavy weight is just allowed to drop, then the empty bucket on the other end of the rope will fly upwards. So the weight of human dissatisfaction with human pleasures taking us down will toss the bucket of our emptiness into God’s breast.
There is a subtle play in the poem with the word “rest”. In verse 2, it is rest in the sense of peace of heart and mind which is withheld from humanity. In verse 4, God allows humanity to keep the rest, that is, the other blessings. But humans keep them “with repining restlessness”. Then, as in some other poems of Herbert, where the key word is hidden in the poem, the only place where true tranquillity can be found is in God’s “breast”.
THE obvious background for the central theme of this poem was Augustine, in whose writings Herbert was well versed, and his famous prayer, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (Confessions, Book I, translated by Henry Chadwick, OUP, 1992). The Latin word is quies, quiet of mind. Fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te. Our hearts are unquiet until they repose in God.
It has also been suggested that another possible reference is the myth of Pandora’s box. In this story, Pandora — which means “all gifts” — was the first woman, sent by Zeus to punish Prometheus for creating and helping humanity. She had a storage jar or box in which all the evils of life were contained. This was inadvertently opened, and all the ills of life were released except one: hope. In Herbert’s version, of course, it is not the miseries of life that are in the storage jar, but its blessings, and what is withheld is not hope but rest.
“The religion of gratitude cannot mislead us,” wrote Wordsworth (letter to Sir George Beaumont, 28 May 1825). But the blessings of life do not always prompt a sense of thankfulness. Sometimes, we take them for granted, even as a right. But we can also become satiated with them, sick and tired of them. Perhaps it is then that we discover there is something more to want.
THE character of God in this picture is one of endearing humility. This is a God content to have humanity on any terms, even if it is only a weariness with the world’s pleasures that tosses us to our true home.
It is a picture not unlike that in Rose Macaulay’s novel The Towers of Trebizond, when the priest asks, “How much longer are you going on like this, shutting the door against God?” The person addressed, who is caught up in a sinful relationship, is told, “It will end: such things always end. What then? Shall you come back, when it is taken out of your hands and it will cost you nothing? When you will have nothing to offer God but a burnt out fire and a fag end. Oh, he’ll take it, he’ll take anything we offer. It is you who will be impoverished for ever by so poor a gift” (The Towers of Trebizond, Collins, 1956).
Herbert himself was someone who had been given every possible gift: a loving home, intelligence, a good education, popularity, success, a creative wit. Worldly success had indeed been snatched away from him, but even before that, when he had it all, had he experienced that “repining restlessness”? Is it true that if we have all we want of this world’s goods — health, wealth, friends, fulfilment in work and love — then we would still find something missing?
This is what C. S. Lewis found. He had a late marriage, and this convinced him that religion could not be manufactured out of our unconscious desire for sex. He and his wife had a fully satisfying sexual relationship. Lewis said that, if God were a substitute for love, then his marriage would have resulted in losing all interest in him. But what both he and his wife discovered was that they wanted something in addition to each other. It was a different kind of want (A Grief Observed, Faber & Faber, 1966).
The Christian conviction is that we find the meaning and purpose of our lives in and through our relationship with God. In him, the restlessness, agitation, and dissatisfaction of life finds quiet of heart and lasting fulfilment.
The Rt Revd Lord Harries of Pentregarth is a former Bishop of Oxford. This is an edited extract from his book Wounded I Sing: From Advent to Christmas with George Herbert, published by SPCK Publishing at £10.99 (Church Times Bookshop £8.79); 978-0-281-08942-0.