George Herbert

Simone Weil was deeply affected by the poem Love III by George Herbert.  I could never see what Weil saw in this poem which seems saccharine,  pious and self-pitying. 'Love' in this case is a trope for God alias Jesus.  Herbert feeling 'Guilty of dust and sin' is beckoned by Love to 'taste my meat'.  Given that Weil, a non-observant Jew, did not really believe in the personal God but, as far as I can gather, a divine mystical force to be reached by 'waiting' and 'decreation' it is strange she is moved by what is plainly a coy poetical love feast between Herbert and his personal God.  I could understand Weil's ineffable approach to the divine but am confronted by the literalness of Herbert. I have just finished reading, Music At Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert by John Drury.  I am perhaps at some accord with Weil that in being acquainted with Herbert and reading his verse one can see something of the pure soul and this in itself is refreshing set alongside our confused time of shallowness, distraction and self-absorption.   Herbert so wove his humble life around the Christian project that his hallowed spirit is infused into his poems and his life. To read Herbert is to walk with him and feel welcome and trusted. Herbert is also a foil to the worldliness of contemporary Christianity with its powerful establishments, money-mindedness and pecuniary incursions into secular spheres. As for Weil - I see more Buddhism in her cosmic view than religion.  Those who 'sit' in quiet meditation are about the practice of 'decreation'. John Drury (a chaplain and fellow of All Souls College, Oxford) is  sympathetic but objective, scholarly but not abstruse.