(HOST) This time of year, beautiful holiday wreaths adorn front doors all over Vermont. They remind commentator Peter Gilbert of a favorite poem.
(GILBERT) Simple holiday wreaths made of evergreen branches make me think of a wonderful poem: A Wreath by George Herbert. Herbert was an Anglican priest who lived in England about the same time as Shakespeare. He wrote metaphysical poetry, poetry that emphasized wit cleverness or startling similes, rather than comparisons and images that seem natural – like love and roses, purity and fresh snow.
In high school, you may have read a poem by John Donne, another seventeenth-century Anglican clergyman, in which a man tries to seduce a woman by comparing their potential encounter to a flea that has bitten them both. It’s hard to imagine a less romantic object or argument to make his case – and that’s the poem’s charm.
Donne wrote another poem that compares two lovers saying goodbye to each other to a compass the kind of compass with which you draw a circle. Although the lovers must part temporarily, they continue to act in sync: as the man travels around, the woman stays put at home, but leans toward the circling man. And its the woman’s standing firmly at home that causes the mans circle of travel to stay true and not wander. These two poems are classic metaphysical poems built on an idea, a conceit, a clever and startling comparison.
Now to Herbert’s poem A Wreath. The poems wit rests in the fact that each of the poems twelve lines overlaps with the next line, just as the evergreen branches in a wreath overlap one another to form a circle. You’ll hear how the end of one line kind of repeats at the beginning of the next line. And the end of the poem you guessed it, brings you back to the beginning — like a circle, a wreath, or a garland that crowns a hero.
It’s a religious poem, but one doesn’t have to be Christian to be struck by the poems beauty and technique. Here’s George Herbert’s, A Wreath.
A Wreathed garland of deserved praise,
Of praise deserved, unto Thee I give,
I give to Thee, who knowest all my ways,
My crooked winding ways, wherein I live, —
Wherein I die, not live; for life is straight,
Straight as a line, and ever tends to Thee,
To Thee, who art more far above deceit,
Than deceit seems above simplicity.
Give me simplicity, that I may live,
So live and like, that I may know Thy ways,
Know them and practice them: then shall I give
For this poor wreath, give Thee a crown of praise.
So, because of its structure or style, the poem itself literally becomes, as the last line says, a wreath, and that wreath-poem becomes, in turn, a garland – a crown of praise. Clever indeed.
Peter Gilbert is executive director of the Vermont Humanities Council.