The Storm
If as the winds and waters here below
Do fly and flow,
My sighs and tears as busy were above;
Sure they would move
And much affect thee, as tempestuous times
Amaze poor mortals, and object their crimes.
Stars have their storms, ev'n in a high degree,
As well as we.
A throbbing conscience spurred by remorse
Hath a strange force:
It quits the earth, and mounting more and more,
Dares to assault, and besiege thy door.
There it stands knocking, to thy musick's wrong,
And drowns the song.
Glory and honour are set by till it
An answer get.
Poets have wrong'd poor storms: such days are best;
They purge the air without, within the breast.
Somewhere in his memory, perhaps as a child, the poet remembers Storm Herbert! Thunder and lightning, gales and rain, instilled the fear of elemental powers beyond human control. The borderline between awe and terror is quite easily crossed when human beings are caught up in nature turned tempestuous.
The natural world is often the starting point for Herbert's poetry of the inner life and spiritual reflection. For Herbert the world of nature is "the creator's eloquent countenance", a thought similar to Calvin's view of creation as the "theatre of God's glory."
Storms are for Herbert a powerful metaphor for a conscience that is troubled and in turmoil, his feelings and affections an inner storm of remorse, guilt and emotional distress. So he storms heaven's doors,and uses the metaphor of the storm to depict the laying of a siege and hammering on God's door till he gets an answer.
The throbbing conscience, the driving of remorse and the frantic cry for an answering word that makes the wrong right. This is Herbert at his most confrontational with God. In his Prayer sonnet he had said prayer is like "an engine against th'Almightie".
Importunate prayer, that is a refusal to be put off by not getting an answer, has a long tradition in Christian spirituality. Going back to Jesus parable of the annoyingly persistent widow and the noisy friend who disturbs the peace at night till he gets what he wants, there has always been a place for the kind of praying that just won't shut up, that storms heaven's gates, and lays siege to God's ears.
It's not easy for the 21st Century mind to appreciate the religious intensity of post-reformation England and the age of the Puritans. Not many would compare guilt for sin to a meteor shower, a storm of light shooting through the darkness; but "starres have their storms" and so does heaven as its doors are stormed by those seeking an answer to their prayers for forgiveness.
The final two lines rehabilitate storms as descriptions of inner tempest and spiritual turmoil: spiritual imagination:
Poets have wrong'd poor storms: such days are best;
They purge the air without, within the breast.
Storms clear the air. Strong exchanges can lead to new understanding. Better to have a row and reconcile than spend a lifetime in resentment. Like Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, human relationships have their own outer and inner weather; Warm mellow feelings of the countryside, peasants celebrating summer, the noises of the countryside from rippling streams to singing birds, and then the thunderstorm explodes across the orchestra, before giving way to the calm melodies of everything returning to normal, washed by rain, illumined by sunshine and the clouds dispersing. Herbert's poem, and its last line, sit exactly in those moments of transition from thunderstorm to calm and renewed summertime.
The poem is not quite resolved. Herbert will have it out with God, and clear the air. That's what storms do. But the making up, the forgiving and moving forward, are merely implied. This poem, in the context of the whole sequence that makes up The Temple, needn't spell it out. God sets aside glory and honour and condescends to answer Herbert's noisy knocking and clamorous pleadings for God's restored love and understanding.
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