Under New Management: Herbert’s “Unkindnesse”
When I discussed George Herbert’s poem
“Unkindnesse” in my last blog, I ran out of room to continue exploring
multiplicities of meaning with the phrase “to purchase my good-will” in the
last stanza (line 24). (For my overview of the poem and initial discussion of
these concluding lines, please see my previous post.)
The words “purchase” and perhaps even
“brasse” in the final stanza remind us of the financial imagery used in stanza
3 (and perhaps, with some play on words, in stanza 4) of “Unkindnesse.” So that
we can look at the last stanza’s imagery in context, I quote stanzas 3-5 of the
poem here:
My friend may spit upon my curious floor:
Would he have gold? I lend it instantly;
But let the poore,
And thou within them, starve at doore.
I cannot use a friend, as I use Thee.
When that my friend pretendeth to a place,
I quit my interest, and leave it free:
But
when thy grace
Sues for my heart, I thee displace,
Nor would I use a friend, as I use Thee.
Yet can a friend what thou hast done
fulfill?
O write in brasse, My God upon a tree
His
bloud did spill
Onely to purchase my good-will.
Yet use I
not my foes, as I use Thee. (lines 11-25)
This poem is contrasting the
speaker’s treatment of his earthly friends with his treatment of the Lord. In
stanza 3, if his friend needs money, he’ll freely lend it. The idea of
“us[ing]” (and perhaps usury?) continues in stanza 4 with the word “interest.”
Here it means career ambitions: the speaker will freely give up his career
position, as with his gold in stanza 3, to lend it to a friend.
 |
| A hanging coin indicates what used to be a bank in Renaissance Germany |
Yet, Herbert’s speaker has been
loath to exercise tangible kindness to God (and to those who represent the
Lord, like the ones in need in lines 13-14). In contrast, the last stanza
reveals that God the Son has spilled his own blood on the cross to purchase, as
I discussed in my previous blog, the good-will of the speaker (his willing
consent) or good-will for the speaker (redeemed virtue).
But wait, there’s more. Back to the
financial imagery. A final definition of “goodwill” in the Oxford English
Dictionary concerns property and business. Def. 4a. is “Permission to enjoy
the use of a property,” while def. 4b. is the purchaser of a business being
granted by the seller the privilege of trading as the seller’s successor (to
take over the business, if I understand it correctly). In the historical
examples given in the OED, the word “goodwill” in both definitions is
often preceded by a possessive, as it is in Herbert here (“my good-will”),
which is another reason I think Herbert may be playing with the word’s
financial connections.
Now, let’s plug these business-related
definitions into Herbert’s theological reflection at the end of “Unkindnesse”: If
Christ has purchased the speaker’s “good-will,” he now has the privilege of
using the speaker’s property, which includes the gold mentioned in stanza 3.
Herbert’s speaker no longer has a right to withhold his finances from the Lord.
Furthermore, the speaker’s property
includes his body and spirit, as the Apostle Paul states in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: “Know ye not that . . . ye are not your
own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in
your spirit, which are God’s” (KJV). The speaker has no right to withhold his heart from the Lord either (lines
18-19). His attitude and feelings (“good-will”) now belong to God.
Herbert’s narrator has been in
breach of contract, as it were. Not only has Christ purchased the privilege of
using the speaker’s property, but he has also bought out the speaker’s business
to take it over, with the deed of sale to be written on a brass plaque.
The Geneva Bible marginalia
cross-references 1 Cor 6:20 with 1 Cor 7:23 (“Ye are bought with a price”) and
that verse with 1 Peter 1, where verses 18-19 remind the faithful “that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, [such] as silver and gold,” . . . “but with the
precious blood of Christ” (KJV). Perhaps Herbert, who believed that “This verse
marks that, and both do make a motion / Unto a third,”* exactly describing this
kind of chain-referencing, had these Scriptures in mind as he subtly contrasts
through his financial imagery the corruptible gold he has refused to offer God
and the precious blood of Christ, which was spilled for his redemption.
In another poem from The Temple, Herbert considers “at what rate and price” he has
Christ’s “love.”** Here in “Unkindnesse,” Herbert’s narrator might have to
relinquish control of his body and spirit, his gold and his goodwill, but the unique
“rate and price” Christ paid for these is much, much higher.
* “The H.
Scriptures II” lines 5-6
** “The Pearl”
line 35
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