FORESHADOW
  • Home
  • Magazine
    • Contents
    • Foresight
  • Podcast
  • Resources
  • About
    • People
    • Works
    • Support Us

Foresight: Upwards Bent

18/3/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Photo: Jon Seligman

'The Flower' by George Herbert

          How Fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! ev’n 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 shrivel’d heart
Could have recover’d greennesse? It was gone

          Quite under ground; 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.

          These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quickning, bringing down to hell

          And up to heaven in an houre;
Making a chiming of a passing-bell,

                              We say amisse,
                              This or that is:
          ​Thy word is all, if we could spell.

          O that I once past changing were;
Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!

          Many a spring I shoot up fair,
Offring at heav’n, growing and groning thither:

                              Nor doth my flower
                              Want a spring-showre,
          My sinnes and I joining together;

          ​But while I grow to a straight line;
Still upwards bent, as if heav’n were mine own,

          Thy anger comes, and I decline:
What frost to that? what pole is not the zone,

                              Where all things burn,
                              When thou dost turn,
          And the least frown of thine is shown?

          ​And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
          I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my onely 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 finde 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 (1593–1633) was a Welsh poet and an Anglican priest.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    Art
    Editorial
    Fiction
    Forethought
    Interview
    Music
    Non-fiction
    Photography
    Poetry
    Review

    RSS Feed

    Forecast

    Support Us

    Picture

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020

Home
Magazine
Contents
Foresight
Podcast
Resources
About
People
Works
Support Us
Connect with Foreshadow
Buy us a coffee
© COPYRIGHT 2020–2022. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • Magazine
    • Contents
    • Foresight
  • Podcast
  • Resources
  • About
    • People
    • Works
    • Support Us