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

Herbert Discussing the Word 149
impossible, 43 and so the reader is prepared for the turmoil and near renunciation of faith
that concludes the poem in stanza eleven.
The ending of ‘Affliction (I)’ is in no way comforting. This is not a poem that
takes a reader through a trial, admits frustration at God, and then brings everything back
around with an ending that admits faith in spite of not understanding and praises God in
the midst of anguish. This poem ends within the affliction and with Herbert’s threat to
find another lord, and requests to have a way out of the ‘irresistible grace’ that he finds
himself bound by.
Yet, though thou troublest me, I must be meek;
In weaknesse must be stout.
Well, I will change the service, and go seek
Some other master out.
Ah my deare God! though I am clean forgot,
Let me not love thee, if I love thee not. (61-6)
As Sean McDowell says, ‘The conclusion of the poem is as dark of any of Donne’s poems
that place the selfishness of the speaker in opposition to the divine will’, 44 and as Helen
Wilcox points out, the ending plays ‘on the multiple meanings of “love”’, 45 and ‘the many
contrasts between superficial and genuine devotion contained in’ 46 the word. The first four
lines of the stanza set up a rebellion against God. Herbert will be meek, but only because
he must. He will find strength in his weakness, a weakness brought on by God. These two
lines contain an idea of a rebellious submission, and then he turns to the idea of walking
43 Romans 3.23.
44 Sean McDowell, ‘Finding Readers’, George Herbert Journal 26.1&2 (2002/3), 77.
45 ‘“All Things Are Big With Jest”’, p. 138.
46 ‘“All Things Are Big With Jest”’, p. 138.