Poetry Day - A broken altar

The other day I found the The New Oxford Book of Seventeenth-Century Verse on a throw out book table. I ummed and argghed because the thing I am not supposed to buy any more of is poetry anthologies. I recently actually got rid of a few, mainly books I had picked up cheap at book fairs and so forth in the first place, which all contained much the same material. But I went back to this one because I don’t have any books devoted to the 17th Century and it looked to have some undiscovered treasures in it, as well as the greats like John Donne and George Herbert. I have a book of George Herbert’s poetry alone, but I have re-discovered this one (which is not unlike this poem by another George).

A BROKEN ALTAR, Lord, thy servant rears,

Made of a heart, and cemented with tears:

  Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;

  No workman’s tool hath touched the same.

                    A HEART alone

                    Is such a stone

                    As nothing but

                    Thy power doth cut.

                    Wherefore each part

                    Of my hard heart

                    Meets in this frame,

                    To praise thy name:

  That, if I chance to hold my peace,

  These stones to praise thee may not cease.

O let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine,

And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine.

George Herbert

The painting is ‘George Herbert at Bemberton’ (1851) by William Bryce, taken from here.