For today, I’ve chosen two stanzas from a poem by George Herbert. (You might need to turn your phone sideways.)
The Flower
…
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.
…
…
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.
George Herbert
(1593-1633)
George Herbert’s short life overlapped with Shakespeare’s. Most of his poems are an internal dialogue, and though he addressed them to God, some atheists (Andrew Marr, William Empson…) enjoy his poems too – you can interpret them as a conversation with his deepest self, I guess. If you want to read the whole poem, go to The Flower.
Janet Morley’s book, The Heart’s Time, has another George Herbert poem for today.