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

Herbert Discussing the Word 155
body of flesh (not just a spiritual reawakening), that Herbert presents his readers with is
very reminiscent of the one discussed in the Donne chapter. With both Donne and
Herbert, there is the guarantee of a bodily resurrection, just as Jesus experienced in the
Gospels, 48 but where Donne’s belief in the bodily resurrection comes from a fear of death,
Herbert’s belief comes from a faith that first originates with God, so it is not, ultimately,
dependent upon Herbert. The idea that all aspects of communication involve a revolving
up and down motion, one best encapsulated in the Incarnation, is found in the very next
poem, ‘Prayer (I)’.
‘Prayer (I)’ is an oft discussed poem. This sonnet is an incomplete sentence that
seems to be trying to define what exactly prayer is to believers, the Church. Although the
poem at times feels like a failed attempt to exhaustively describe what prayer is, and
though it ends with what may seem to be an anti-climax with the two words ‘something
understood’, there is really no other definition of prayer that needs to be given, because all
of this (prayer, faith, repentance, incarnation) exists in what the Church has traditionally
described as mysteries. Since all these mysteries contain the same continuous up and
down movement (a movement that Mario A. Di Cesare also finds in the incarnationally
focussed Gospel of John), 49 concluding that prayer is simply ‘something understood’
between God and the Church is oddly comforting and appropriate.
‘Prayer (I)’ exists in the nebulous space between earth and heaven, but there is also
a very strong Christological emphasis to be found in the poem. Although it seems obvious
that prayer must have an upward thrust, we see that prayer also involves the movement
down to humanity and, in many instances in the poem, involves the work of the
Incarnation. The work of God coming to humanity so that it can return to him is clearly
seen in the second line of the poem when Herbert tells the reader that prayer may be
48 Mark 16.14.
49 Mario A. Di Cesare, ‘Herbert’s “Prayer (I)” and the Gospel of John’, in Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry
Pebworth (eds.), “Too Rich to Clothe the Sunne” (Pittsburgh, 1980), p. 103.