George Herbert

Man is one world, and hath

Another to attend him.

Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame,

When once it is within thee.

Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,

God’s breath in man returning to his birth,

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth

Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six-days world transposing in an hour,

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

Exalted manna, gladness of the best,

Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,

The land of spices; something understood.

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,

Though foolishly he lost the same,

Decaying more and more,

Till he became

Most poor:

With thee

O let me rise

As larks, harmoniously,

And sing this day thy victories:

Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

Who goes to bed and does not pray,

Maketh two nights to every day.

Wit's an unruly engine, wildly striking

Sometimes a friend, sometimes the engineer.

By no means run in debt: take thine own measure.

Who cannot live on twenty pound a year,

Cannot on forty.

Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing,

My God and King.

Who says that fictions only and false hair

Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?

Is all good structure in a winding stair?

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,

A box where sweets compacted lie.

The worst speak something good; if all want sense,

God takes a text, and preacheth Pa-ti-ence.

Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie:

A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby.