Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE BANQUET, by GEORGE HERBERT


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE BANQUET, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Welcome sweet and sacred cheer
Last Line: Strive in this, and love the strife.


WELCOME, sweet and sacred cheer;
Welcome, deare;
With me, in me, live and dwell:
For thy neatnesse passeth sight;
Thy delight
Passeth tongue to taste or tell.

O what sweetnesse from the bowl
Fills my soul,
Such as is, and makes divine!
Is some starre (fled from the sphere)
Melted there,
As we sugar melt in wine?

Or hath sweetnesse in the bread
Made a head
To subdue the smell of sinne,
Flowers, and gummes, and powders giving
All their living,
Lest the enemie should winne?

Doubtlesse neither starre nor flower
Hath the power
Such a sweetnesse to impart:
Onely God, who gives perfumes,
Flesh assumes,
And with it perfumes my heart.

But, as pomanders and wood
Still are good,
Yet, being bruis'd, are better scented;
God, to show how farre his love
Could improve,
Here, as broken, is presented.

When I had forgot my birth,
And on earth
In delights of earth was drown'd,
God took bloud, and needs would be
Spilt with me,
And so found me on the ground.

Having rais'd me to look up,
In a cup
Sweetly he doth meet my taste.
But, I still being low and short,
Farre from court,
Wine becomes a wing at last.

For with it alone I flie
To the skie;
Where I wipe mine eyes, and see
What I seek for, what I sue:
Him I view
Who hath done so much for me.

Let the wonder of this pitie
Be my dittie,
And take up my lines and life:
Hearken under pain of death,
Hands and breath,
Strive in this, and love the strife.





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