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

Herbert Discussing the Word 151
With the negative parallelism of ‘Affliction (I)’ (‘not love thee’, ‘love thee not’) describing
a positive state of being, that of loving someone, being so closely followed by a positive
parallelism in ‘Repentance’ (the act of confession in order to rectify a situation) describing
a negative state of being, that of sinfulness, the reader is led, very quickly, through an
emotional transition that allows the feeling of wanting to leave God, while also
acknowledging the ceaseless movement towards God. While highly clever, and clearly
well constructed, this is not Herbert trying to use rhetoric to manipulate readers into a false
reconciliation with God; instead it is a very complex, yet simply stated, portrayal of the
back and forth movement of the life in Christ for the believer. The cries of frustration and
anger that we find in ‘Affliction (I)’ are not superficially forgotten in such a quick
transition to ‘Repentance’, rather, the relationship between Herbert and God takes on a
much more human understanding. It is human to change emotions quickly – to be
accusatory one moment and repentant the next, and in the transition that exists between
these two poems, we get a sense of Herbert relating to God as a person, in a kind of lovers’
spat. The reason that this can happen, and the reason that Herbert need not explain away
or apologise for approaching God as a person is because God indeed was a person.
Through the Incarnation, humans are allowed to approach God in their humanity and know
that he will respond in kind as well, because he already has. The emotions of ‘Affliction
(I)’ are real, and they are never completely apologised away, even if he does seek
forgiveness for a lack of trust. This type of unresolved return to God is also seen at the
end of ‘The Collar’, when, after railing against God, and not wanting to submit to his rule,
the poem ends with:
But as I rav’d and grew more fierce and wilde
At every word,