George Herbert - Priest And Poet

Portrait by Robert White, 1674

I like to note George Herbert's feast day, but yesterday, I missed it, because I read the readings for Anna Cooper's feast day by mistake. Anna Cooper is quite worthy of note in her own right, but I have my special saints. Sorry about that. I read the Lectionary offerings for Herbert today.

Readings:

Psalm 23 or 1
1 Peter 5:1-4
Matthew 5:1-10

PRAYER

Our God and King, who called your servant George Herbert from the pursuit of worldly honors to be a pastor of souls, a poet, and a priest in your temple: Give us grace, we pray, joyfully to perform the tasks you give us to do, knowing that nothing is menial or common that is done for your sake; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

An excerpt from one of Herbert's poems:

THE FLOWER

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
are Thy returns! Even as the flowers in spring,
to which, besides their own demean,
the late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivelled heart
could have recovered greenness? It was gone
quite underground, as flowers depart
to see their mother-root, when they have blown;
where they together
all the hard weather,
dead to the world, keep house unknown.
....

And now in age I bud again;
after so many deaths I love and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
and relish versing. O my only Light,
it cannot be
that I am he
on whom Thy tempests fell all night.

These are Thy wonders, Lord of love,
to make us see we are but flowers that glide;
which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide.
Who would be more,
swelling through store,
forfeit their paradise by their pride.

George Herbert

Image from Wiki.