A wreathed garland of deserved praise,

Of praise deserved, unto thee I give,

I give to thee, who knowest all my ways,

My crooked winding ways, wherein I live,

Wherein I die, not live: for life is straight,

Straight as a line, and ever tends to thee,

To thee, who art more far above deceit,

Then deceit seems above simplicity.

Give me simplicity, that I may live,

So live and like, that I may know thy ways,

Know them and practise them: then shall I give

For this poor wreath, give thee a crown of praise.

WREATHS have been made in Europe since the time of the Etruscans. In our own time, people often associate them with death, but their main significance in the past was as a sign of victory, as in ancient Greece where, made of olive leaves, a wreath would be put on the head of the victor in the Olympic Games. Sometimes, the association with death and the sign of victory are combined, both in the ancient world and now, as in the Remembrance Sunday ceremony.

This beautiful and highly crafted poem itself takes the form of a wreath, as will be explored later. The poem is about praise, deserved praise, made even by someone whose ways are “crooked” and “winding”. A crooked and winding life is one that leads to death. Here, death means not just physical death, but death in the sense of being cut off from God. In the Hebrew criptures, the people are given the choice of life or death, true life, that is life in union with God. So in this poem in line 6 we have the alternative to death, which is a life that is

Straight as a line,

and ever tends to thee.

THE winding life is characterised by deceit and self-deception; for we are reluctant to properly know ourselves. This is in sharp contrast to the honest self-knowledge and simplicity of the truly good life. Here we have the line, “Give me simplicity, that I may live”, discussed in relation to an earlier poem. So the poet ends by asking that he might live like that, both knowing and practising the way of God. If that happens then he will “For this poor wreath, give thee a crown of praise”.

The point here is that the wreath is made by threading a branch in and out, which is the best we can do. But if we live it as true as we can it will be not just a garland to hang round the neck, which is such a frequent and lovely custom in India when someone is welcomed, but a chaplet that goes on the head, like the crown of thorns, but in this case “a crown of praise”.

IF WE look back at the poem, we see it takes the form of a winding wreath, the last word of each line being repeated near the beginning of the next. Then, again the last word of each of the first four lines is repeated in the last four lines of the poem but in reverse order so that the “deserved praise” of the first line comes to a climax in “a crown of praise” in the last line. The whole poem, like our lives, is an interlacing, but with the possibility of making a crown at the end. It is Herbert’s poetic mastery at its highest, without losing the essential simplicity of his theme, which is praise. An extra musicality is given to the poem by the repeated use of the words “give” and “live”.

Herbert is above all a poet of praise. In a cynical age, praise does not come easily. There is, as W. B. Yeats put it in “The Seven Sages”:

A levelling, rancorous, levelling sort of mind

That never looked out of the eye of a saint

Or a drunkard’s eye.

Praise begins in recognising something good, then appreciating and admiring it. It takes us out of ourselves as we focus on what is worthwhile in itself. Sometimes, the good is so good we are astonished and lost for words. For those keen on tennis, it happened when Roger Federer was at his peak. It felt a privilege to have lived at a time when he played. Other people will be able to draw examples from elsewhere: perhaps ballet or football, music or gymnastics.

THE main purpose of having minds like ours is to discover the things that are of real value, setting aside all shams, shows and stunts to know what will last — the kind of qualities we saw in the late Queen Elizabeth II, for example, which the country as a whole, even republicans, were able to recognise and praise.

Suppose we come to recognise that there is a reality that is good, all good, supreme good, our true and everlasting good. Then there would be praise indeed. Herbert recognised this reality, which is why he was a poet of praise who wanted to sing “My God and King” all his days. Christopher Smart, who wrote a famous poem about his cat praising God, also wrote, in 1776, in his long praise poem “A Song to David”:

Praise above all — for praise prevails;

Heap up the measure, load the scales,

And good to goodness add:

The gen’rous soul her saviour aids,

But peevish obloquy degrades;

The Lord is great and glad.

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.