Jesse Sharpe PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

Herbert Discussing the Word 142
devotion to bridge the gap. Herbert’s realisation becomes anxiety and then nothingness,
for there is nothing he can do.
Then for thy passion – I will do for that –
Alas, my God, I know not what. (49-50)
He is left dumbfounded, or as Richard Strier says of the ending, ‘When the speaker focuses
his attention on the cross, his attitude turns from competition to awe’. 34
He ends his
‘Thanksgiving’ with the knowledge that, while he can give thanks, he cannot give equal
sacrifice. And so it is to the next poem, ‘The Reprisal’ that we must look to see how
Herbert manages to come to terms with his debt.
‘The Reprisal’ begins in resignation. The first two lines find Herbert admitting that
‘I have consider’d it, and finde | There is no dealing with thy mighty passion’. He is at a
loss, and oddly, he feels defeat in the contemplation of Christ’s trial and death. ‘For
though I die for thee, I am behinde; | My sinnes deserve the condemnation’. (3-4) And
through the rest of this four stanza poem, we see the same back and forth movement
playing out between Herbert and his desires to perform acts that will somehow justify the
work that God has done for him, but once again, it is resignation to God’s work that he
must accept, and it is finally through this resignation that victory is found, for in the
second stanza we read
O make me innocent, that I
May give a disentangled state and free:
And yet thy wounds still my attempts defie.
34 Richard Strier, Love Known (London, 1983), p. 52.