The seventeenth century has possession of that "morn" caught once
upon its uplands; nor can any custom of aftertime touch its
freshness to wither it.


TO MY INCONSTANT MISTRESS


The solemn vengeance of this poem has a strange tone--not unique,
for it had sounded somewhere in mediaeval poetry in Italy--but in a
dreadful sense divine. At the first reading, this sentence against
inconstancy, spoken by one more than inconstant, moves something
like indignation; nevertheless, it is menacingly and obscurely
justified, on a ground as it were beyond the common region of
tolerance and pardon.


THE PULLEY


An editor is greatly tempted to mend a word in these exquisite
verses. George Herbert was maladroit in using the word "rest" in
two senses. "Peace" is not quite so characteristic a word, but it
ought to take the place of "rest" in the last line of the second
stanza; so then the first line of the last stanza would not have
this rather distressing ambiguity. The poem is otherwise perfect
beyond description.


MISERY