Contrarities

WHat is this strange and uncouth thing?

To make me sigh, and seek, and faint, and die,

Untill I had some place, where I might sing,

And serve thee; and not onely I,

But all my wealth and familie might combine

To set thy honour up, as our designe.

 

And then when after much delay,

Much wrastling, many a combate, this deare end,

So much desir’d, is giv’n, to take away

My power to serve thee; to unbend

All my abilities, my designes confound,

And lay my threatnings bleeding on the ground.

 

One ague dwelleth in my bones,

Another in my soul (the memorie

What I would do for thee, if once my grones

Could be allow’d for harmonie):

I am in all a weak disabled thing,

Save in the sight thereof, where strength doth sting.

 

Besides, things sort not to my will,

Ev’n when my will doth studie thy renown:

Thou turnest th’ edge of all things on me still,

Taking me up to throw me down:

So that, ev’n when my hopes seem to be sped,

I am to grief alive, to them as dead.

 

Ah my deare Father, ease my smart!

These contrarieties crush me: these crosse actions

Doe winde a rope about, and cut my heart:

And yet since these thy contradictions

Are properly a crosse felt by the Sonne,

With but foure words, my words, Thy will be done.

 

—George Herbert

 

Herbert was unwell most of his life—"a weak, disabled thing”—and died at age 39. In this poem he reflects on the illness he calls a "contrariety." Why, when he prepared so long to preach (“study thy renown"), and when he was willing to give all to that task, did God "throw him down" contrary to his wishes?

 

The"contrarieties”  crushed him: the "cross actions" cut into his heart, a fair description of the way prolonged illness makes us wonder if God knows, or cares, or knows what he’s doing.

 

But in the end Herbert saw, as we must see, that illness is a cross to be taken up and borne as Jesus bore his cross, “with but four words.”

 

His words become our words: "Thy will be done."

 

David Roper

9.30.21