Love I
Love's Name on Dust
The poet addresses Immortal Love as the author of creation and laments that man has misapplied that glorious name to mortal love.
Immortal Love, author of this great frame of the world, sprung from that beauty that can never fade: how has man parceled out your glorious name and thrown it on that dust which you have made,✦1 While mortal love takes all the title!
Wit and Beauty Hold Sway
Mortal love, aided by invention, possesses heart and brain, while wit and beauty play out the world and divine Love stands by, even though that Love delivered us from hell.
Which, siding with invention, they together hold all the sway, possessing heart and brain (your workmanship), and give you a share in neither.2 Wit imagines beauty; beauty raises wit. The world is theirs—those two play out the game while you stand by. And though your glorious name brought about our deliverance from the infernal pit,
Who Sings Your Praise?
Despite redemption, no one sings divine Love's praise; instead only a scarf or glove prompts our hands to write of love.
Who sings your praise? Only a scarf or glove warms our hands and makes them write of love.3
Read the original English
IMmortall Love, authour of this great frame, Sprung from that beauty which can never fade; How hath man parcel'd out thy glorious name, And thrown it on that dust which thou hast made,
While mortall love doth all the title gain! Which siding with invention, they together Bear all the sway, possessing heart and brain, (Thy workmanship) and give thee share in neither.
Wit fancies beautie, beautie raiseth wit: The world is theirs; they two play out the game, Thou standing by: and though thy glorious name Wrought our deliverance from th' infernall pit,
Who sings thy praise? onely a skarf or glove Doth warm our hands, and make them write of love.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Gen.2.7;Gen.3.19 — Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Gen.3.19 — By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, for from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Notes
- 1 ↩Early modern 'frame' means the fabric/structure of creation (the cosmos), not a picture frame; rendered as 'great frame of the world' for clarity while keeping Herbert's term.
- 2 ↩invention: early-modern sense of inventive wit/ingenuity (not a manufactured device); pairs with 'wit' in the following section.
- 3 ↩Scarf and glove are courtly love-tokens; the line contrasts trivial worldly romance with neglected praise of God.
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