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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.
Herbert Discussing the Word 156 described as ‘Gods breath in man returning to his birth’. The God-breathed creation of Adam is now returning that breath to God when the Church talks to him, and while prayer as a force of creation, makes perfect sense in a religion whose creation myth and knowledge of God comes solely through words, it is the third stanza that shows prayer as a part of the Incarnation. Although there are other images of God as life-giver and redeemer with prayer variously being described as ‘Christ-side-piercing spear’, ‘The six-daies world transposing in an houre’, and ‘Exalted Manna’, it is line eleven that is particularly noteworthy. Line eleven contains only six words, but those six words completely sum up who Jesus is in the Incarnation and what believers become when they commune with God by way of the work of the Incarnation, ‘Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest’. Prayer then is not just words, it not just an action, but it is a being. Prayer is the ‘Word . . . made flesh’. 50 And here prayer, relationship with God, all interactions between creator and created, move by way of the Incarnation. Herbert is Christological in his poetic emphasis; he only presents his readers with Christ as a way to know God. If God the father is beyond all comprehension, then God as a carpenter is very easily considered. If God is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, above all approach and reproach, then a working-class God is approachable by anyone regardless of social standing. This too allows Herbert to approach God with his voice and to hear God speak to him in a language that he can understand. Just as the Bible was the Word of God written in the language of God’s people, so too was the Word incarnate as one of God’s people, and so when Elizabeth Clarke states that ‘Herbert is all too aware that no external voice actually intrudes into his poetry: at least, if it does, it speaks in his own familiar accents’, 51 she is both correct and incorrect, because there is an external voice, but because of the Incarnation and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in this Temple, God’s voice will speak in Herbert’s ‘familiar accents’, and this 50 John 1.14. 51 Elizabeth Clarke, Theory and Theology in George Herbert’s Poetry (Oxford, 1997), p. 268.
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Postscript 244 POSTSCRIPT The parad
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Bibliography 246 BIBLIOGRAPHY Abrah
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Bibliography 248 Bush, Douglas. Eng
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Bibliography 250 Creeds of the Chur
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Bibliography 260 Kessner, Carole.
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Bibliography 270 Richards, Bernard.
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Bibliography 274 Siegfried, B. R.
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