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

Herbert Discussing the Word 147
My dayes were straw’d with flow’rs and happinesse;
There was no moneth but May. (19-22)
There is a hint that a change is coming in the poem when the first line of the stanza begins
with the two words ‘At first’, and as the reader reaches the fifth line, the change in tone
arrives in full.
But with my years sorrow did twist and grow,
And made a partie unawares for wo. (23-24)
Just as line one of the stanza begins with a warning that a change is coming, so too there is
a hint in line five, the transitional line, that things have not always been quite as glorious as
Herbert has been indicating. One reads that ‘with [his] years sorrow did twist and grow’,
the sorrows did not begin, rather, they grew. Although the poem up to this point has
seemed filled with nothing but joy and contentment, the reader sees here that there was an
unacknowledged pain lurking behind the poem, as Herbert shows when he has written in
the third stanza that ‘my thoughts reserved | No place for grief or fear’, (15-16) there was
certainly some strife that existed outside of his thoughts, and though his mind would not
admit them, his body did. Stanza six is nothing but a harsh and arresting statement of pain
– physical, psychological, and spiritual.
My flesh began unto my soul in pain,
Sicknesses cleave my bones;
Consuming agues dwell in ev’ry vein,
And tune my breath to groanes.