Bitter-Sweet (Bruce Ray Smith)

I love George Herbert’s poem, “Bitter-Sweet.”

Assigned these eight lines for a college literature class, one expects a conversation about oppositions, paradox, perhaps St. Augustine’s notion of the “Fortunate Fall.”

I’ve been a teacher myself; I’ve no objection.

But the best thing about this poem is its tone. Intimate. Not presumptuous. Not quite bitter. Not quite sweet. More than a little daring:

Ah, my dear angry Lord,

Since thou dost love, yet strike;

Cast down, yet help afford;

Sure I will do the like.

I will complain, yet praise;

I will bewail, approve;

And all my sour-sweet days

I will lament and love.

Sure I will do the like. Is it possible to speak so? To speak to God himself in such a way? It’s not possible, not without utter trust, to take such liberties, not even in jest.

Not even in such subtle, layered, vexed and loving jest as this.

Herbert understands that God is to be feared. He understands that he, George Herbert, not more than a man, heir to the Fall, cannot make terms. But he has also come to understand that God, in teaching, loves him, even in striking, even in casting down.