Poem of the Day: ‘To Find God’

As a lyric poet, Robert Herrick (1591–1674) — whose birthday is this week, August 24 — counted himself among the “Sons of Ben”: literary followers and heirs to the poet and dramatist Ben Jonson, a company that also included Richard Lovelace and Thomas Carew. Herrick’s carpe diem poems — “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” “Corinna’s Going A-Maying” — appear as standards under the “Cavalier Poetry” heading in high-school and college English textbooks. Having taken holy orders in 1623, Herrick served as Anglican vicar of Dean Prior, in Devonshire, from 1630 until his death in 1674, with a hiatus during the English Civil War and Protectorate, when the reigning Puritans expelled many high-church Royalist clergymen from their parishes.Today’s poem, “To Find God,” shows us Herrick as a devotional poet. Here the speaker tackles the question: Where is God? Of course the short answer is God is everywhere, but Herrick’s speaker responds as the God of the Book of Job would answer: Tell me the weight of the fire; tell me the dimensions of the wind. Herrick sifts the forms of water: Find the source of the oceans; distinguish one water from another. Name all the fish. From a cloud distill the rain that, fallen and evaporated, formed the cloud. Count the dust motes and the stars. Penetrate these mysteries, the poem says, and thus may you glimpse the hand that made them.To Find God by Robert Herrick Weigh me the fire; or canst thou find A way to measure out the wind? Distinguish all those floods that are Mixed in that wat’ry theater, And taste thou them as saltless there, As in their channel first they were. Tell me the people that do keep Within the kingdoms of the deep; Or fetch me back that cloud again, Beshivered into seeds of rain. Tell me the motes, dust, sands, and spears Of corn, when summer shakes his ears; Show me that world of stars, and whence They noiseless spill their influence. This if thou canst; then show me Him That rides the glorious cherubim. ___________________________________________ With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.

Poem of the Day: ‘To Find God’

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