WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Poetry Fix: Love (II)

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Today, Erika Kyba reads George Herbert's Love (II), in which the poet turns to correct the problems of disordered love that he raised in Love (I).

Welcome to the Poetry Fix on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm your host, Erica Kaiba, bringing you your weekly fix of poetry from across time. Today we're reading George Herbert's Love 2. This poem acts as a corrective to many of the problems that Herbert introduces in Love 1. If you'll recall from the last episode, Love 1 concludes, as Herbert sadly observes, that no poet writes of the divine, immortal love, rather only a scarf or glove, courtly love tokens, warm the poet's hands and inspire their poetry. Love too begins by reaching for something higher than a scarf or glove.

Herbert immediately appeals to immortal heat, which evokes images of the Holy Spirit as flame. He then asks the immortal flame of God's love to let thy greater flame attract the lesser to it. Perhaps the lesser flames are human hearts, or perhaps they are desires within the human hearts, which are then absorbed and ordered by the overarching power of God's love. This is St. Augustine's principle of Ordo Amoris, of being educated to love the right things and in the right degree. For Herbert, this ordering of loves takes place through a kind of divine, refining fire. He wants fire from heaven to make the world tame,

to bring it back under God's guiding hand, rather than its own willful urges, and to consume the lusts of the human heart. In consuming these lusts and inordinate loves, the divine fire makes a way for God in the human heart. Only then, Herbert writes, will our hearts pant for God as one pants for water. In scripture, Christ describes himself as the true drink, and says that anyone who comes to him will never thirst again. Herbert wants the human heart to be transformed so that it knows to thirst for this divine love. Additionally, once the heart is transformed, the brain, God's heart. workmanship will turn from using its invention falsely and instead lay its invention at

God's altar and there in hymns send back thy fire again. The creative image of God and man will be used in gratitude, rendering back to God, what is God's. Herbert continues, Our eyes shall see thee, which before saw dust, dust blown by wit till that they both were blind. In Love One, he sees the courtly poets throwing God's name on dust, or rather human beings who will ultimately return to dust, and using their invention to blow the image of their lovers far out of proportion. In other words, all they see is dust, physical images of beauty, which is blown by wit into a false dimension. However, once the poet is refined by God's fire,

his eyes can see God. Perhaps Herbert means that he can now look at other human beings and seek God in them instead of a false idol. With all that said, let's dive in. Love to by George Herbert. Immortal heat, O let thy greater flame attract the lesser to it. Let those fires which shall consume the world first make it tame and kindle in our hearts such true desires as may consume our lusts and make thee way.

Then shall our hearts pant thee. Then shall our brain all her invention on thine altar lay, and there in hymns and back thy fire again. Our eyes shall see thee, which before saw dust, dust blown by wit till that they both were blind. Thou shalt recover all thy goods and kind

who wert diseased by usurpent lust. All knees shall bow to thee, all wits shall rise, and praise him, who did make and mend our eyes. listening to The Poetry Fix with Erica Kaiba. If you enjoyed this episode, consider following the Poetry Fix on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. And if you have any poems you want to see in a future episode, email your suggestions to The Poetry Fix at gmail.com. Join me next week, and we'll be reading Sir Walter Raleigh's Praise'd Be Diana's Fair and Harmless Light.