George Herbert’s 'Prayer', by Eve Lockett

George Herbert window

St Andrew's Church, Bemerton

You may have gathered the weekly Radio 4 programme Something Understood, presented by Mark Tully, has come to the end of production. Each episode explored a different aspect of faith and experience. The title was taken from George Herbert’s poem Prayer:

Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age, 

God's breath in man returning to his birth, 

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage, 

The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth 

Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r, 

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear, 

The six-days world transposing in an hour, 

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear; 

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss, 

Exalted manna, gladness of the best, 

Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise, 

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood, 

The land of spices; something understood.

Herbert’s poem has been described as one long sentence without a verb! Each rich phrase is a brushstroke evoking the mystery of our communion with God. It is a poem to savour, to reflect on in quiet contemplation. And it rhymes – so skilfully that one hardly notices.

Herbert comes to the subject of prayer from the perspective of an ordained Anglican priest. But he does not represent prayer as for ‘members only’. It is the cry of all humanity for meaning, for intervention, for some connection beyond our solitude as a species. In prayer we are drawn back to God, to our origins, ‘the heart in pilgrimage’, God’s breath in us returning.

Prayer is not just acquiescence, it involves struggle and protest.  ‘Engine against th’ Almighty’ is an image of forcefulness, of siege warfare against heaven, as is the phrase ‘reversed thunder’. Herbert is drawing on the traditional image of heaven speaking in a voice of thunder, shaking people awake, overwhelming them. Here it is humanity that thunders – shouts back, you could say, attempting to shake God. 

And then in the next phrase, ‘Christ-side-piercing spear’, our thoughts are turned to the cross. Herbert sincerely believed in the truth of God sending Jesus into the world as our saviour. In prayer we ‘inflict’ a wound on Christ, because it is through the cross that Christ embraced all our human need. In Jesus we see God’s brokenness, his humility and compassion, giving himself in love so that others might live. Prayer is also ‘the church’s banquet’, reminding us of the feast of communion – bread and wine – where Christians remember the death of Jesus, and also celebrate that he rose from the dead and our future is with him.

‘The milky way, the bird of Paradise, church-bells…’ – from the farthest reaches of the stars, the ethereal, the mythical, the beyond, we come to the abrupt phrase ‘soul’s blood’ – the deep, fundamental guts of being alive. Prayer allows the full dramatic range of the human spirit, welcomes it. Nor is prayer airy-fairy, it calls to our senses and our passions – ‘the land of spices’ – evocative, sensory, alluring.

There is so much more to draw from Herbert’s poem. I have only picked out a few phrases, and even they keep resonating for me in new ways. In the end, we have ‘something understood’, we have grasped only a little, for, as Herbert demonstrates, there is no end to the wonder and mystery of exploring prayer.