These words, "after death for cures", were actually taken from George Herbert's Life, a poem (ironically ) written about death.
About the Author
George Herbert was a Welsh poet, orator and Anglican priest who lived during the Elizabethan era. The Temple, published in 1633, the same year he died, is a collection which includes most of what the world knows of his metaphysical poetry. As Mark Jarman in Hudson Review wrote, "Reading through The Temple, one does have the sense in poem after poem of being in the presence of a private conversation between the poet and his God."
source: http://hudsonreview.com/2014/10/writing-for-god-the-life-and-work-of-george-herbert/#.V1g17Pl97IU
About the Poem
Like his poem Vertue, this poem by Herbert is an imagery to the transience of life, particularly for people living then when even Herbert's own death at 39 was not uncommon.
How short is the day! How short do flowers live! How short is my life!
These are the commonly painted images going back even to the Old Testament days when Prophet Isaiah said, "The grass withers and the flowers fall" (Isaiah 40:8)
Back in the days when bathing was as rare as living past one's fifties, posies were commonly picked for their aroma; its scent was used to mask decaying odor, the pungent smell of disease, and everything else suspended in the air of the medieval streets. Posies then were valued for their medicinal aroma or sweet savour; the term for disguise in taste is 'sugaring'.
And we can see how the posy was symbolized in all of the three stanzas of the poem: brevity in the first, as a guard against the smell and taste of death in the next stanza, and usefulness that goes beyond death in the last.
source: http://crossref-it.info/textguide/metaphysical-poets-selected-poems/4/252
The Blog Title
I first read this poem from an old copy of Our Daily Bread back in high school and as most devastatingly beautiful poems about human limitations & mortality, this one stayed with me.
This poem was a remnant of the shadow of death following me when I rise early in the morning, a peripheral view of life's transience; this was the steady beating of a long-forgotten song which in vain I try to hum while standing beside someone else's death bed; and this was the longing for a validation of my life lived and not just of an existence wasted.
I badly want to start writing again with all the freedom I have to release the words without the hate, and to begin returning to point zero where once upon a time I proudly stood not regretting nor blaming others for all the choices I made.
I guess this is me growing up and this is me coming into terms with reality that just as much as I want to live, I also do not want to stop living after my death.
About the Author
George Herbert was a Welsh poet, orator and Anglican priest who lived during the Elizabethan era. The Temple, published in 1633, the same year he died, is a collection which includes most of what the world knows of his metaphysical poetry. As Mark Jarman in Hudson Review wrote, "Reading through The Temple, one does have the sense in poem after poem of being in the presence of a private conversation between the poet and his God."
source: http://hudsonreview.com/2014/10/writing-for-god-the-life-and-work-of-george-herbert/#.V1g17Pl97IU
About the Poem
Like his poem Vertue, this poem by Herbert is an imagery to the transience of life, particularly for people living then when even Herbert's own death at 39 was not uncommon.
How short is the day! How short do flowers live! How short is my life!
These are the commonly painted images going back even to the Old Testament days when Prophet Isaiah said, "The grass withers and the flowers fall" (Isaiah 40:8)
Back in the days when bathing was as rare as living past one's fifties, posies were commonly picked for their aroma; its scent was used to mask decaying odor, the pungent smell of disease, and everything else suspended in the air of the medieval streets. Posies then were valued for their medicinal aroma or sweet savour; the term for disguise in taste is 'sugaring'.
And we can see how the posy was symbolized in all of the three stanzas of the poem: brevity in the first, as a guard against the smell and taste of death in the next stanza, and usefulness that goes beyond death in the last.
I made a posy, while the day ran by:
“Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie
My life within this band.”
But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they
By noon most cunningly did steal away,
And withered in my hand.
My hand was next to them, and then my heart;
I took, without more thinking, in good part
Time’s gentle admonition;
Who did so sweetly death’s sad taste convey,
Making my mind to smell my fatal day,
Yet, sug’ring the suspicion.
Farewell dear flowers, sweetly your time ye spent,
Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament,
And after death for cures.
I follow straight without complaints or grief,
Since, if my scent be good, I care not if
It be as short as yours.
The Blog Title
I first read this poem from an old copy of Our Daily Bread back in high school and as most devastatingly beautiful poems about human limitations & mortality, this one stayed with me.
This poem was a remnant of the shadow of death following me when I rise early in the morning, a peripheral view of life's transience; this was the steady beating of a long-forgotten song which in vain I try to hum while standing beside someone else's death bed; and this was the longing for a validation of my life lived and not just of an existence wasted.
I badly want to start writing again with all the freedom I have to release the words without the hate, and to begin returning to point zero where once upon a time I proudly stood not regretting nor blaming others for all the choices I made.
I guess this is me growing up and this is me coming into terms with reality that just as much as I want to live, I also do not want to stop living after my death.
This is me writing my eulogy.
0 comments:
Post a Comment