Dear flesh, while I do pray, learn here thy stem
And true descent, that when thou shalt grow fat

And wanton in thy cravings, thou mayst know
That flesh is but the glass which holds the dust
That measures all our time; which also shall
Be crumbled into dust. Mark, here below
How tame these ashes are, how free from lust,
That thou mayst fit thyself against thy fall.

Herbert, ever the humble man, knows his flesh all too well; no matter how many times his soul repairs to the church, his flesh SHALL remain weak. But rather than chastise it, Herbert offers it a fond suggestion – dear one, whenever (“when”) you are immoderate in your cravings, just remember that you are as mortal as any of these buried here. And perhaps in remembering that, you will be able to prevent yourself from falling into sin (“That thou mayst fit thyself against thy fall”).

Here's another grammar quiz this poem inspires me to give myself: Near the end, what is the referent of the pronoun "which" in "which/ Also shall be crumbled into dust"? Time? Dust? Glass? The hourglass or the sand in it or the time it measures? Clearly, all of the above.

Robert, I’m often leery of “all of the above,” which can be a way of excusing ambiguity (and many have commented on other ambiguous pronoun referents besides this one). So I’d like to suggest the most likely referent grammatically – “time.” As a devout Christian, Herbert believed that eternal life is possible. And if someone is fortunate enough to obtain it, time itself would “be crumbled into dust.” So here is another fond reminder to both dear flesh and the soul – when the flesh falls / fails, so does the soul.

For me, that suggests a fine progression from the beginning to the end of this poem. At first, the speaker was merely giving the flesh something to do outside the church while the important business was conducted inside by the soul. But by the end of the poem, the speaker has realized that schooling the flesh is just as important as cultivating the soul.

And a question to someone who knows more about the Bible than I do – doesn’t it suggest that at the Second Coming (when time is REALLY crumbled into dust) both souls and their reunited bodies would ascend to heaven? All the more reason for Herbert to suggest that attaining salvation is a joint endeavor.

Thanks for this illuminating post. And yes, I think "time" is the referent of "which," though of course since the dust and the glass containing it exist within the order of time, they too will pass away.

The point about the body's reunion with the soul at the time of the resurrection is well taken--the body, though crumbled into dust, will be reconstituted, joined to the soul, and admitted to heaven.

From Corinthians, 15, King James version:

51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

hola MA,

I like your reasoning re Time as the "which also"... and I would concur except that I think one other interpretation (which is more of an adjunct or corollary in meaning, not so much an alternate one) is also possible. (Note that I also intend to steer clear of "all of the above," but I'm fudging more than you bravely did):

If it were a comma instead of a semicolon, i'd just agree with you, period. [:-)] ... However (while not at all sure that semicolons were used so distinctively from commas in his day), the semicolon by our current grammar standards, would mean a parallel and meaning-connected main clause, and the semicolon could stand in (for rhythm's sake) for repetition of the sentence's initial syntax and the "which" following it could refer back then to "flesh" and "(hour)glass" - which at this point have been equated. In sum, the flesh is a glass holding the seeping dust - but the flesh itself becomes ("crumbles into") dust as well.

Just a moment ago, I commented on the "Mark, here below..." line of this same concluding stanza - in the thread by Josh_F (I think i'm remembering the name correctly)

And I'd also note another provocative wording snuck in the poem's final address to his flesh that might complicate your concluding ¶ here, MA:

Dear flesh, while I do pray, learn here thy stem
And true descent,

It would be helpful to have Herbert's own Tuesday-PF recording of his voice reading the poem with the intonation he intended :-) ... because how he would accent the word "true" or not could make a difference. My initial reading is to hear "true" accented - and, if so, it suggests that what his "I" is doing - praying - looking to the heavens for supplication or hope or transcendence -- is not, what he realizes at the gravesite (be it inside or outside the church), the "true" lesson ... that the true lesson to be learned is this gravesite one about "descent" rather than "heaven" ... That would be a rather bold and heretical stance for an ordained priest in the Church of England.... I would think. So maybe that's not what he meant?

It was only a secondary reading in my head where I considered a de-emphasis on the word "true" - and I then decided to check RP's reading and indeed he opts for the less accented reading of "true" ... But who knows what Herbert's own intonation would have been? "True" to suggest that what the soul in prayer is doing is not "as true" (or even "true" at all?) ??? compared to what the descent of the flesh into grave, which is where he instructs his flesh to turn?

AH... but then perhaps he's only instructing his flesh here (more postmodernism on his part) and NOT reducing himself to his flesh (in keeping with other dualisms we've collectively noted) ... Perhaps he's addressing his flesh to learn one lesson - as to where it's headed - while his soul in prayer is working on the lesson his priesthood has focused him on in the more foregrounded way? ... Maybe that brings me back round to your "joint endeavor" - although in more of a "split endeavor" sort of way ...

p.s. I note that Church Memorials was not included in the original Norton Anthology selection of his poems, and I wonder what year this poem was written - where in his life's contemplation vis-a-vis being ordained (which i've seen cited as being in 1630 one place and 1626 in another) after apparent disillusion with a life in politics ...

p.s. 2: I do think it's worth noting that his 1633 collection of poems was called "The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations." That suggests to me he could be 'having his way with us' at the same time he's a "religious poet" - not the title of a religious poetry volume that would pass muster, say, with today's 21st version brand of devout worshippers, i would say ... ???

Z,

I think Herbert was using "ejaculation" in a specialized sense, definition 4b in the Oxford English Dictionary:

"A short prayer ‘darted up to God’ (Fuller) in an emergency. In wider sense: A short hasty emotional utterance".

But the more usual modern sense, as the emission of seed (in plants) or semen (in humans and animals), appears to have come into the language at the beginning of the 17th century (first OED example is from 1603), so Herbert would probably have been aware of it.

Mary Ann, Zinya expresses well some of the reasons I continue to hear "all of the above" when I read "which" also shall be crumbled into dust. "Time" is the antecedent noun, supporting the way you and Paul B. choose to understand this moment-- but "time" is also the strangest possibility: an abstraction, or an entity with no physical substance, being crumbled into dust. In contrast, an hourglass is likely to be crumbled into dust, eventually, as will--surely the main idea here?-- human flesh.

To refine my "all of the above," I think that "time" is primary in one way, and "flesh" is primary in another way (along the lines of what Zinya says, with parallel uses of "which" ('which holds . . . which also shall" , , ,) and that when I read the poem, hear it, all of these nouns seem to denote things subject to dissolution: the numerous, as-if-universal, grammatical possibilities act out or re-enforce the universal reach of dissolution.

What I like about this discussion is that we are like musicians analyzing a score, or film students freezing frames: I feel an awareness that this close analysis is meant to enrich a live, immediate experience.

On a similar happy note, for a while today the Herbert poem was the "Most E-Mailed" article in Slate. At this moment, in third place. Which is heartening.

The antecedent must be glass/flesh because everything else is already dust. The reference to time is "our time" and "all" has referred to people. So though there's a distant reminiscence of the concept of resurrection, I agree, the main meaning is collapse.

Dust to dust. Notice, though, that the body is a thou. Not only the soul escapes this fate, but also the mind.

There's also a problem with the logic. If the body is to collapse into anonymous dust no matter what, why would "fit" or unfit matter? In fact, the Egyptian Harper's Song as probably only the first I know to use this inevitability as excuse rather than restriction:

Lay of the Harper

'Tis well with this good prince; his day is done,

His happy fate fulfilled. So one goes forth

While others, as in days of old, remain.

The old kings slumber in their pyramids,

Likewise the noble and the learned, but some

Who builded tombs have now no place of rest,

Although their deeds were great.

Lo! I have heard the words Imhotep and Hordadaf spake

Their maxims men repeat - Where are their tombs?

Long fallen - e'en their places are unknown,

And they are now as though they ne'er had been.

No soul comes back to tell us how he fares

To soothe and comfort us ere we depart

Whither he went betimes. But let our minds

Forget of this and dwell on better things.

Revel in pleasure while your life endures

And deck your head with myrrh. Be richly clad

In white and perfumed linen; like the gods

Anointed be; and never weary grow

In eager quest of what your heart desires.

Do as it prompts you - until that sad day

Of lamentation comes, when hearts at rest

Hear not the cry of mourners at the tomb,

Which have no meaning to the silent dead.

Then celebrate this festal time, nor pause,

For no man takes his riches to the grave;

Yea, none returns again when he goes hence.

Song from the Tomb of King Intef, c. 2000 BCE

Donald Mackenzie, Egyptian Myth and Legend, pp.246f, [1907]

Notes:

Imhotep: Third dynasty official, step pyramid architect, was deified

Hordadaf: Son of the Pharaoh, Khufu, who built the largest pyramid.

Beautiful, no?!

Paul, thanks for the excerpt from Corinthians. How lovely that it is the Buddhist Jew who knew the New Testament "answer."

If it were a comma instead of a semicolon, i'd just agree with you, period. [:-)] ...

Ah, Z, I live for the day when you would " just agree with [me], period. [:-)] ..."

But on the very real possibility that it might not happen in my lifetime --

: - )

-- I shall note that it appears Herbert uses a semicolon whenever what follows is a phrase (i.e. S + V), regardless of what kind of phrase it is. (Check out the other semicolons in the poem.)

What I like about this discussion is that we are like musicians analyzing a score, or film students freezing frames: I feel an awareness that this close analysis is meant to enrich a live, immediate experience.

Robert, whenever one of these monthly classics shows up, I c + p to a Word file many of the replies, thinking that I will use their ideas in a future class I might teach. And then, after a day or so and 4 or 5 pages of replies, I give up. Nobody except us poetry nutz could sustain this much analysis. So while I agree that it's an enriching experience, others might not.

And unlike classroom discussions with the hourglass on the wall dropping the minutes of the hour, online discussions have the time to wander to Buddhism, other poems, etc.

Addendum:

The Lay of the Harper came to mind in part because of the connection between these lines of Herbert and the ancient author:

Lo! I have heard the words Imhotep and Hordadaf spake

Their maxims men repeat - Where are their tombs?

Long fallen - e'en their places are unknown,

And they are now as though they ne'er had been.

These laugh at jet and marble, put for signs,

To sever the good fellowship of dust,
And spoil the meeting: what shall point out them,
When they shall bow, and kneel, and fall down flat
To kiss those heaps which now they have in trust?

As both Herbert and Anonymous point out, memorials are unsuccessful because they disappear. The authors agree that thoughts and words - even words readable (Herbert's "lines") or quoted for a long time - are also ultimately ephemeral. Ironic for the descendants of those who built the pyramids.

Whatever people are disappears from the world we know.

MaryAnn:

Paul, thanks for the excerpt from Corinthians. How lovely that it is the Buddhist Jew who knew the New Testament "answer."

Paul is a pretty cool Buddhist Jew.

Handel’s Messiah, Part Three: The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

I’m trying to stay out of Religious trouble, but Handel’s Messiah is fair game; it is also what I’m going to listen to tonight, portions of it.

Robert, whenever one of these monthly classics shows up, I c + p to a Word file many of the replies, thinking that I will use their ideas in a future class I might teach. And then, after a day or so and 4 or 5 pages of replies, I give up. Nobody except us poetry nutz could sustain this much analysis. So while I agree that it's an enriching experience, others might not.

Mary Ann, as you've said in the past, these discussions are a mode or category of their own; not like a classroom, not like publication, not like a private conversation, but something of their own. And that surprising encouragement about the Herbert poem being most-emailed in all of Slate for a while . . . maybe this is not just an arcane pursuit for specialist-maniacs (though I do like arcane pursuits for specialist-maniacs) but also an avenue into, or deeper into, the art of poetry.

Not too much for nutz like us to hope, I think.

Mary Ann, don't give up -- I think many more people than one might suppose could find a discussion like this enriching! I say this based on my experiences in my own poetry group (we discuss other people's poems, not our own) and in many classes, as well as from what I glimpse in other cultures. (I've just learned from the Japanese-American National Museum in Los Angeles that in addition to forming baseball clubs soon after they immigrated to the US in the early 1900s, many Japanese started/joined poetry societies.) How heartening to learn from Robert that this poem was being emailed by Slate readers. I'm glad to see these monthly poems fostering the Fray's kind of debate, with its capacity for minute analysis as well as broad digression.

Hi Elise, the men digress also.

Hi Hap,

Did you mean male Fray participants digress as well? Of course they do, and I'm glad to see it! Did I say they didn't? My comment above was in direct response to this one by Mary Ann and referred to all Fray participants (regardless of gender ):

Robert, whenever one of these monthly classics shows up, I c + p to a Word file many of the replies, thinking that I will use their ideas in a future class I might teach. And then, after a day or so and 4 or 5 pages of replies, I give up. Nobody except us poetry nutz could sustain this much analysis. So while I agree that it's an enriching experience, others might not.