Discipline by George Herbert

About George Herbert

Herbert was some fifteen years older than John Milton, the most
celebrated of English poets to have treated religious subjects, but the
work of the two poets could scarcely be more different: Milton's verse
is public, rhetorical, bombastic and solemn;
his aim is twofold - to prove God's justice in His dealings with His
Creation, and to write the great English epic, to match the best works
of the classical poetry of antiquity; Milton's work is massive, highly
structured in twelve books, each prefaced by an outline or “argument”,
and rejects the convention of rhyme, as “no necessary adjunct or true
ornament of poem or good verse”.

[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]

Herbert's work is more private, subjective but modest in its aim. He creates an appearance of order by the arrangement of the poems that make up The Temple but there is no clear structure as in Milton's Paradise Lost.
Herbert's tone is more conversational, his art directed to achieving a
sense of naturalness and simplicity. Where Milton's God seems (to the
modern reader) remote from real, lived experience, Herbert addresses his
Maker with a kind of reverent familiarity; Milton may invoke the Holy
Spirit as his Muse but God is too aweful to be approached so nearly;
Herbert never ceases to address God. For Milton God is revealed in the
Holy Scripture; for Herbert God is revealed in every part of daily life
whether high or humble: even the “drudgery” of one “who sweeps a room”
devoutly becomes “divine”.

[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]

Herbert, the parson and writer of sermons, who takes a set subject or
text and then discourses on it, to edify his flock, is often discernible
in the argument of a poem.

[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]

Herbert's style

What is striking about Herbert's style is its clarity and directness; Herbert regularly defends his plainness or commends a commonplace expression of praise, as in the two Antiphons or the first Jordan
poem. He is not like the heathen who think to be heard of God because
of their many words. Herbert is never needlessly obscure, for effect,
say. He becomes obscure when he treats difficult matters, as in Jordan (I). The notion of restraint, temperance and self-discipline, as recommended in The Church Porch and in the argument of many of the poems is reflected in their structure. This is taken to its extreme in Discipline.

[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]

Discipline

The thought of the poem is fairly clear: God is asked to use Love
rather than punishment to remedy the poet's shortcomings; in spite of
his failures he is always ready and willing to undergo the corrective of
Love in which he has complete faith. The striving after God and the
ready subjection of the self are mirrored in the restrained expression
of the poem. The lines are brief: the longest has five syllables, the
shortest three: “0 my God” or “I aspire”.

Necessarily, the verse relies heavily on monosyllabic words: there is
a sense of enormous compression; the lines are blunt, austere because
free of embellishment or exposition; digression is not possible:

“Who can scape his bow?
That which wrought on thee,
Brought thee low,
Needs must work on me.”

[ندعوك للتسجيل في المنتدى أو التعريف بنفسك لمعاينة هذا الرابط]

The idea of the poet's subjection to, and humbling of himself before,
God is embodied in the poem's terseness - any tendency the self may
have to expansiveness or unrestrained expression is curbed. Man is
nothing; God is not to pardon him for his own merits but to do justice
to the Divine nature - Herbert, while barely daring to speak, almost
audaciously reminds God of what He is. We see the self-humbling best in:

“Not a word or look
I affect to own,
But by book,
And thy book alone.”

The entreaty to God to act according to His own unchanging mercy comes in the last stanza:

“Though man frailties bath,
Thou art God:
Throw away they wrath

.”

thanks Mr ...I've realy found some good points in this article

ميرسى كتير ع المعلومات القيمة

Merci beucoup for these information Dr.said

جزيتم خيرا

شكرا يا مستر سيد على التوبيك و منورنا و نورك زايد و ساحب الكهربة كلها و الفتورة هتبقى غالية شكلها كده

Thanks so much
for these informations

شكرااا ليك

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