18 min listen
Herbert: Four Early Modern Poets on Repentance, Lent 2024
Herbert: Four Early Modern Poets on Repentance, Lent 2024
ratings:
Length:
12 minutes
Released:
Mar 29, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
This year on Old Books with Grace, I am offering a Lent series on penitential poetry from Early Modern poets. That is, on poems of the past that reflect on one’s sin, on the need for forgiveness, on lament, on making things right, on conversion and satisfaction.
In the spirit of Lent, this series will be stripped down to the essentials, which is something I’m trying to maintain in my own life this season. I will give you some background on the poet and poem, where you can find the poem, and translation information if need be. Then, I will read you the poem. I will offer five minutes of silence on the podcast. If you’d like to take this opportunity to meditate on the poem, here is space for you. Today's poem is The Agony by George Herbert.
Philosophers have measur’d mountains,
Fathom'd the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staffe to heav’n, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sinne and Love.
Who would know Sinne, let him repair
Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skinne, his garments bloudie be.
Sinne is that presse and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruell food through ev’ry vein.
Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the crosse a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquour sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine.
In the spirit of Lent, this series will be stripped down to the essentials, which is something I’m trying to maintain in my own life this season. I will give you some background on the poet and poem, where you can find the poem, and translation information if need be. Then, I will read you the poem. I will offer five minutes of silence on the podcast. If you’d like to take this opportunity to meditate on the poem, here is space for you. Today's poem is The Agony by George Herbert.
Philosophers have measur’d mountains,
Fathom'd the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staffe to heav’n, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sinne and Love.
Who would know Sinne, let him repair
Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skinne, his garments bloudie be.
Sinne is that presse and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruell food through ev’ry vein.
Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the crosse a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquour sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine.
Released:
Mar 29, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (65)
A Lovely Short Intro to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Want to think about a spooky, wonderful medieval poem together for October? This episode kicks off a series on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a poem about magic, humanity, creatureliness, and failure written in the fourteenth century by an anonymou... by Old Books with Grace