The Poetry Fix

Welcome to the Poetry Fix on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I’m your host, Erika Kyba, bringing you your weekly fix of poetry from across time.

Today, we’re reading “The Holy Communion,” by George Herbert. This is a meditation on the Eucharist which plays a lot with the concept of distance. Herbert begins the poem by musing on how the Christian God chooses to reveal Himself to men; he imagines that God could have presented Himself to men in “rich furniture” or “in a wedge of gold,” but did not. The images that Herbert leads with are sumptuous, but they also convey a sense of distance. Furniture and gold is something you admire from without, and the more extravagant it is, the more distant you are from it. The finest china are not the dishes you use on the day-to-day.
Contrast this with the Holy Communion; Herbert goes on to describe how “by the way of nourishment and strength / Thou creep’st into my breast.” Now we have an inward movement: God does not want to be distantly admired, like furniture, but he wants to move closer and closer to the heart. Herbert is drawing on the theology of the Eucharist to make this point: when he writes of “nourishment” and “strength,” he is reflecting on Christ’s gift of His own flesh as food for Christians. There is a double meaning, then, as the Communion bread provides physical nourishment, but also strengthens the soul.
By the fourth stanza, there is a further upheaval of the furniture imagery. So, we begin the poem by imagining, what if God was removed from us, as a piece of furniture that we find in a room? Midway through the poem, Herbert imagines our souls as houses, containing multiple rooms, with God able to access all of them through his grace. It’s a much more intimate image.
Herbert will continue playing with the image of rooms towards the close of the poem. He writes that, before sin, Adam was able to move from his earthly paradise to heaven as if he were merely changing rooms. And, in Herbert’s imagination, the Eucharist unlocks that ability for us once again, giving us the opportunity to experience heaven on earth at any moment that we please.

With all that said, let’s dive in.

The Holy Communion
By George Herbert

NOt in rich furniture, or fine aray,
Nor in a wedge of gold,
Thou, who for me wast sold,
To me dost now thy self convey;
For so thou should’st without me still have been,
Leaving within me sinne:

But by the way of nourishment and strength
Thou creep’st into my breast;
Making thy way my rest,
And thy small quantities my length;
Which spread their forces into every part,
Meeting sinnes force and art.

Yet can these not get over to my soul,
Leaping the wall that parts
Our souls and fleshy hearts;
But as th’ outworks, they may controll
My rebel-flesh, and carrying thy name,
Affright both sinne and shame.

Onley thy grace, which with these elements comes,
Knoweth the ready way,
And hath the privie key,
Op’ning the souls most subtile rooms;
While those to spirits refin’d, at doore attend
Dispatches from their friend.
Give me my captive soul, or take
My bodie also thither.
Another lift like this will make
Them both to be together.

Before that sinne turn’d flesh to stone,
And all our lump to leaven;
A fervent sigh might well have blown
Our innocent earth to heaven.

For sure when Adam did not know
To sinne, or sinne to smother;
He might to heav’n from Paradise go,
As from one room t’another.

Thou hast restor’d us to this ease
By this thy heav’nly bloud;
Which I can go to, when I please,
And leave th’earth to their food.

You've been listening to The Poetry Fix, with Erika Kyba. 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 thepoetryfix@gmail.com. Join me next week, and we'll be dipping our toes into Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.”