Our Own Insecurities and George Herbert’s Poem “A True Hymn”
How, yet again, the struggles of a poet from 400 years ago speak to my concerns today
Do you ever feel that you’re rarely good enough? Clever enough? Competent enough? Productive enough? Good-looking enough? (Whatever it is for you.) Probably most of us feel this way!
My favorite poet, George Herbert (1594-1633), often reflects on these kinds of struggles. For him, it usually relates to his poetic creativity.
It probably doesn’t help that he set himself lofty creative goals as a teenager. In two sonnets sent to his mother,1 Herbert declared his intention to turn the same poetic language and metaphors the love sonnet writers had been using to a more holy purpose: writing of the beauty of God.2 “Sure Lord, there is enough in thee to dry / Oceans of Ink,” declares Herbert (Sonnet 2, lines 1-2). (Love sonnet sequences were all the rage in the 1590s. Shakespeare’s sonnets were actually a late addition to the craze.)
But, having set himself some lofty goals, Herbert seems to have struggled to believe that his attempts to reach them were ever good enough.
In my last post, I wrote about his poem “The Forerunners,” where Herbert’s concern is that his aging and perceived cognitive decline are affecting his creativity.
Today’s focus is on his poem “A True Hymn.” Like “The Forerunners” (and almost all of Herbert’s English poems), this comes from his posthumously-published collection The Temple (1633). In “A True Hymn,” Herbert is seeking to write the perfect hymn, one that is “Among the best in art” (line 8). Herbert’s poem begins with an address to God, with titles that come from his heart, which he personifies as running, muttering, and (in the last stanza) sighing:
A True Hymn3
My joy, my life, my crown!
My heart was meaning all the day,
Somewhat it fain would say:
And still it runneth mutt’ring up and down
With only this, My joy, my life, my crown.
Yet slight not these few words:
If truly said, they may take part
Among the best in art.
The fineness which a hymn or psalm affords,
Is, when the soul unto the lines accords.
He who craves all the mind,
And all the soul, and strength, and time,
If the words only rhyme,
Justly complains, that somewhat is behind
To make his verse, or write a hymn in kind.
Whereas if th’ heart be moved,
Although the verse be somewhat scant,
God doth supply the want.
As when th’ heart says (sighing to be approved)
O, could I love! And stops: God writeth, Loved.
Herbert begins with the phrase that (like the repeated phrase from “The Forerunners,” “Thou art still my God”) becomes a mantra of his heart, the core of this hymn that his heart longs to write. But, given the heart’s running “up and down” (l. 4), we sense excitability and disorganization.4 The poet has these titles for God—“My joy, my life, my crown”—but doesn’t know where to go with them.
Herbert’s speaker then steps back in the middle two stanzas to analyze his efforts: the words are good as long as they are “truly said” (l. 7). A poem needs “soul” “accord[ing]” with its lines to be “fine” (ll. 9-10). (Is there a harmony joke here on accord = a chord? It would be like Herbert and entirely consonant with the poem’s meaning.) Stanza three continues in this cerebral way to elaborate on the idea of words and rhyme alone not being good enough to write a true hymn.
It’s the last stanza that keeps appearing in my thoughts of late. Whose approval should I really be seeking? After all, the heart (my heart, your heart) is “sighing to be approved” (l. 14)—by someone, by lots of someones. It’s hard to get past this, even if I know in my head that whatever I do I should be doing heartily as unto the Lord, not unto people (Colossians 3:23).
Seeking others’ approval is what leads us to these thoughts of comparison: I’m not good enough (at whatever), clever enough, productive enough, creative enough, competent enough, good-looking enough, etc. And I realize that we might even apply these anxieties to seeking God’s approval. Herbert does. Even after telling himself that it’s really the heart of his poetic verse that matters and that God will supply whatever is lacking.
Yet his heart still sighs “to be approved,” saying “O, could I love!” (l. 15), because for Herbert, writing fine poetry to God, “the best in art” (l. 8), is an act of love. How can he love God sufficiently if his poetry won’t cooperate, if he’s not creative enough?
Notably, God’s answer comes only after the poet has stopped (ceased the running and muttering and sighing): “God writeth, Loved” (l. 15).
Regardless of how successful Herbert is at creating that perfect hymn to God, God loves him AND God supplies what is lacking in the poet’s efforts. God says, You are loved. And he writes Loved on all your efforts to be “enough.”
I’ve been rehearsing these last three words from Herbert’s poem to myself lately when those insecurities and anxieties pop up. I hope they will minister to you too. God loves you!
George’s mother was Magdalen Herbert, a patron of John Donne, for those of you who have been following Karen Swallow Prior’s journey through British Literature Survey—a course I’ve also been teaching for over 20 years.
You can find both of these early Herbert sonnets, found in Isaak Walton’s 17th-century biography of Herbert, at https://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herbert/sonnet2.htm.
Courtesy of https://www.georgeherbert.org.uk/archives/selected_work_08.html. (I have slightly modernized the spelling.) This link to “A True Hymn” from a UK organization dedicated to George Herbert gives a short commentary on the poem. You can also explore further to find good background information on Herbert himself, as well as the little church where he ministered (St. Andrew’s outside Salisbury, England).
In academic shorthand, l. = line and ll. = lines.
This is why my striving heart has freedom and is satisfied by His love. Those three words describe my life journey: striving, freedom, and satisfied. “God writeth, ‘Loved.’” Thank you, Lord. Thank you for reminding us, Jennifer.