“When first thou didst entice to thee my heart,/I thought the service brave”
In the poem’s opening lines, the speaker speaks directly to God. He is suggesting that God directly attracted the speaker to a life of religious devotion. At first, he thought serving God would be a worthy and excellent thing to do.
“Such stars I counted mine: both heaven and earth;/Paid me wages in a world of mirth”
In these lines, the speaker hyperbolically expresses the joy he feels serving God. It as if owns the stars and is paid in happiness. The use of a financial metaphor here (”wages”) foreshadows the incorrect assumptions the speaker holds about a life devoted to God. He puts God in the position of a master or boss who financially compensates those who dedicate themselves to religion. By treating religion like an exchange, the speaker develops unhealthy expectations of a life without sorrow or pain.
“What pleasures could I want, whose King I serv’d,/Where joys my fellows were?”
Here the speaker asks a rhetorical question: Serving God and having various forms of joy as my companions, what pleasures could be lacking from my life? By describing “joys” as his “fellows” the speaker is engaging in personification. This contrasts with his real friends, who die in the middle section of the poem.
"At first thou gav'st me milk and sweetnesses;/I had my wish and way;/My days were straw'd with flow'rs and happiness;/There was no month but May."
These lines occur in the fourth stanza, directly before the speaker's pains begin afflicting him. The memorable rhyme of "way" and "May" combined with the song-like alternating long and short lines give the passage a lightness that strongly contrasts with the darker content that follows.
“But with my years sorrow did twist and grow,/And made a party unawares for woe”
Occurring at the end of the fourth stanza, these lines mark the poem’s first major shift in tone. Up until now, the speaker has been busy imagining all the pleasure that devotion to God will bring him. However, as he gets older, he finds that his sadness actually increases. Sorrow is metaphorically described as something twisting and growing, like a vine wrapping around his legs. This is the first of several images contrasting the easy movement of the poem’s first section with the feeling of being trapped and constrained that becomes dominant in the middle section. “To make a party unawares for woe” means to accidentally take the side of sadness. It is as if a war has broken out and the speaker has found himself on the wrong side.
“My flesh began unto my soul in pain”
The speaker’s flesh becomes personified in this line. His flesh speaks to his soul and begins complaining about the sickness and disease he experiences.
Whereas my birth and spirit rather took/The way that takes the town;/Thou didst betray me to a ling’ring book,/And wrap me in a gown”
These lines draw on the famous opposition of “town” versus "gown”: that is, life in the city versus life working in academia or for the church. The speaker suggests that God tricked him into choosing the gown even though his “birth and spirit” (his family upbringing and personal inclinations) might have made him better suited for a regular life. This is one of several moments where the speaker directly accuses God, suggesting that he has been blocked from choosing the things that might have been better for him. This line is often read biographically, since George Herbert initially hoped to have a successful career in the court of King James I. Instead he worked in a prestigious position at the University of Cambridge and then spent the end of his life at a small parish in Salisbury, England.
“Yet lest perchance I should too happy be/In my unhappiness,/Turning my purge to food, thou throwest me/Into more sickness”
These lines provide one of the poem’s several paradoxical images. The speaker has decided to give up opposing God’s will. If it is fated that he is to be unhappy, then he will try to find happiness in this unhappiness. Seeing that he’s getting too comfortable, God decides to transform the speaker’s purge (a kind of religious fast or purification) into food. The sudden over-abundance then makes him sick. This part of the poem marks the height of the speaker’s frustration. He has traded rebellion for acceptance of suffering, but then God turns this suffering around and makes it even more intolerable.
“Well, I will change the service, and go seek/Some other master out”
Herbert was a deeply religious person, but the speakers of his poems do not always reflect his own beliefs. Here the speaker engages in blasphemy, claiming that if serving God does not help his life then maybe he will serve someone or something else instead. This is a dangerous threat. Since “master” here means “God,” these lines directly contradict the central religious tenant of not putting anything else in God’s place: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3).
“Ah my dear God! though I am clean forgot,/Let me not love thee, if I love thee not”
The poem’s final lines provide another of Herbert’s notoriously difficult paradoxical statements. The first part is ambiguous. To be “clean forgot” can mean either that the speaker has completely forgotten God, or that God has forgotten him. The second part also has two meanings that contradict each other. The final line could be read to mean: ‘I should love you completely and without reserve. If I can’t love you in this way, then don’t give me the satisfaction of pretending that I do.’ Or it could mean: ‘I’m so certain about my love for you that if you find out that I actually don’t love you, then you should cut me off from the most important thing to me—loving you.’
Just when we might expect to find resolution to the speaker’s spiritual conflict, the poem actually ends with this unsolvable paradox. He doesn’t simply say ‘I love you and there is no reason to doubt it.’ Instead, he affirms his need to love God while simultaneously casting doubt on his ability to sustain it. While the speaker has embarked on a spiritual journey during the course of the poem and has had many realizations, it is left up to the reader to interpret whether or not the conflict has reached a resolution. The speaker seems just as afflicted at the end of the poem as he was at the beginning, though perhaps in a different way.
