The Flower by George Herbert

Form: Lyric | Year: 1633

Full Text

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! ev'n as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snows in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivelled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown;
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quick'ning, bringing down to hell
And up to heaven in an hour;
Making a chiming of a passing-bell.
We say amiss,
This or that is:
Thy word is all, if we could spell.

O that I once past changing were,
Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!
Many a spring I shoot up fair,
Off'ring at heav'n, growing and groaning thither:
Nor doth my flower
Want a spring shower,
My sins and I joining together.

But while I grow in a straight line,
Still upwards bent, as if heav'n were mine own,
Thy anger comes, and I decline:
What frost to that? What pole is not the zone,
Where all things burn,
When thou dost turn,
And the least frown of thine is shown?

And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my only light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night.

These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide;
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide.
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

Overview

"The Flower" is Herbert's most autobiographical poem about the cycle of spiritual desolation and renewal. The central metaphor is simple but inexhaustible: the soul is a flower that dies back in winter and returns in spring. What makes the poem extraordinary is Herbert's honesty about the experience. He doesn't pretend the dark periods are brief or manageable. The heart goes "quite under ground" and keeps "house unknown"—it disappears so completely that recovery feels impossible. The poem's emotional arc moves from astonished gratitude ("How fresh, O Lord") through theological reflection on God's power, to a confession of pride and its punishment, and finally to the quiet miracle of late-life renewal: "And now in age I bud again, / After so many deaths I live and write." That line—"I live and write"—is one of the most moving in English devotional poetry because it equates creative work with spiritual resurrection. The final stanza pivots to a universal lesson: we are "flowers that glide," and those who try to be more than flowers "forfeit their Paradise by their pride."

Line-by-Line Analysis

Lines 1-7

The opening stanza captures the sheer surprise of spiritual return. "How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean / Are thy returns!" — the exclamation is genuine relief, not pious formula. The simile of "late-past frosts" bringing "tributes of pleasure" to spring flowers is psychologically precise: the memory of suffering makes the return sweeter. "Grief melts away / Like snows in May" compresses the transformation into two short lines that mirror the sudden speed of emotional change.

Lines 8-14

"Who would have thought my shrivelled heart / Could have recovered greenness?" — this is the key question. Herbert is genuinely astonished at his own recovery. The flower metaphor deepens: flowers "depart / To see their mother-root, when they have blown." The dead-looking plant isn't dead — it's retreated underground to its root. "Where they together / All the hard weather, / Dead to the world, keep house unknown" — "keep house unknown" is a domestic image for hibernation. The soul in desolation is not destroyed, just hidden.

Lines 15-21

"Killing and quick'ning, bringing down to hell / And up to heaven in an hour" — God's power is characterized by extremes. "Making a chiming of a passing-bell" turns a death knell into music. The stanza ends with a crucial theological claim: "Thy word is all, if we could spell." Human attempts to categorize reality ("This or that is") are misguided — everything is God's word, if only we could read it.

Lines 22-28

Herbert confesses his desire for stability: "O that I once past changing were, / Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!" He wants the cycle to stop. But then he admits his own role in the pattern — "Off'ring at heav'n, growing and groaning thither" describes spiritual ambition that is also painful. "My sins and I joining together" gives the spring-shower image a bitter twist: his tears of repentance water his own growth.

Lines 29-35

The confession of pride. "But while I grow in a straight line, / Still upwards bent, as if heav'n were mine own" — the problem is presumption, growing as though heaven is owed. "Thy anger comes, and I decline" — the spiritual frost is God's response to pride. "What frost to that?" — no natural cold compares to divine withdrawal. "When thou dost turn, / And the least frown of thine is shown?" — even God's smallest displeasure is worse than any natural disaster.

Lines 36-42

The turn to gratitude: "And now in age I bud again, / After so many deaths I live and write." "So many deaths" — not one dark night but repeated cycles. "I live and write" is Herbert's most personal confession: writing poetry is proof of spiritual life. "I once more smell the dew and rain" — the sensory details signal genuine presence, not abstract faith. "It cannot be / That I am he / On whom thy tempests fell all night" — the recovery is so complete that the suffering self feels like a different person.

Lines 43-49

The concluding stanza reframes the whole poem as a lesson in humility. "To make us see we are but flowers that glide" — "glide" suggests both graceful motion and transience. "Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide" — acceptance of the cycle earns a permanent place. "Who would be more, / Swelling through store, / Forfeit their Paradise by their pride" — those who try to exceed their nature (to be more than flowers) lose what they had. The echo of Eden's fall is deliberate.

Themes

Spiritual desolation and renewal as natural cycle
The paradox of pride in spiritual growth
Creative work as evidence of spiritual life
Humility as the condition for grace
The inadequacy of human categories before God
Recovery as astonishment — the impossibility of believing one has survived
Nature as analogy for the soul's hidden persistence

Literary Devices

Extended Metaphor: "my shrivelled heart / Could have recovered greenness" — The entire poem sustains the flower metaphor — the soul buds, withers, retreats underground, and returns in spring. Herbert never breaks the metaphor, letting it carry theological weight without abstraction.
Simile: "Grief melts away / Like snows in May" — The brevity of the simile mirrors its content — grief disappears as quickly as these two short lines pass. The seasonal reference ties the emotional experience to the natural cycle the poem describes.
Paradox: "Killing and quick'ning, bringing down to hell / And up to heaven in an hour" — God's power is defined by contradictions that would be impossible in nature. Herbert doesn't resolve them — the point is that divine action exceeds human logic.
Personification: "the late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring" — Frosts are reimagined as subjects paying tribute to spring. Past suffering becomes an active contributor to present joy rather than merely its absence.
Variable Line Length: "Grief melts away / Like snows in May" vs. "The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring" — Herbert alternates between long and very short lines within each stanza. The short lines create sudden compression — emotional punches amid the longer meditative lines.
Autobiographical Confession: "After so many deaths I live and write" — Herbert breaks the metaphorical frame to speak directly about his own experience as a poet. The line connects physical survival, spiritual renewal, and the act of writing as a single event.

Historical Context

Herbert wrote "The Flower" near the end of his life. He was ordained as a country parson in 1630 after years of ambition for a political career at court, and died in 1633 at age 39. "The Temple," the collection containing this poem, was published posthumously — Herbert gave the manuscript to Nicholas Ferrar on his deathbed, telling him to burn it if it wasn't useful. The poem's cycles of spiritual aridity and renewal reflect Herbert's own difficult path to ordination and the Calvinist-inflected Anglican theology that saw God's grace as intermittent and sovereign, not earned by human effort.