Today’s Poem: A Thanksgiving to God, for his House

Robert Herrick gives thanks for a small, gentle life

Jennie A. Brownscombe, The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth, 1914 (Wikimedia Commons)

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A Thanksgiving to God, for his House

by Robert Herrick

Lord, Thou hast given me a cell
         Wherein to dwell,
A little house, whose humble roof
         Is weather-proof:
Under the spars of which I lie
         Both soft, and dry;
Where Thou my chamber for to ward
         Hast set a guard
Of harmless thoughts, to watch and keep
         Me, while I sleep.
Low is my porch, as is my fate,
         Both void of state;
And yet the threshold of my door
         Is worn by th’ poor,
Who thither come and freely get
         Good words, or meat.
Like as my parlour, so my hall
         And kitchen’s small;
A little buttery, and therein
         A little bin,
Which keeps my little loaf of bread
         Unchipp’d, unflead;
Some brittle sticks of thorn or briar
         Make me a fire,
Close by whose living coal I sit,
         And glow like it.
Lord, I confess too, when I dine,
         The pulse is Thine,
And all those other bits, that be
         There plac’d by Thee;
The worts, the purslain, and the mess
         Of water-cress,
Which of Thy kindness Thou hast sent;
         And my content
Makes those, and my beloved beet,
         To be more sweet.
’Tis Thou that crown’st my glittering hearth
         With guiltless mirth;
And giv’st me wassail-bowls to drink,
         Spic’d to the brink.
Lord, ’tis Thy plenty-dropping hand
         That soils my land;
And giv’st me, for my bushel sown,
         Twice ten for one;
Thou mak’st my teeming hen to lay
         Her egg each day;
Besides my healthful ewes to bear
         Me twins each year;
The while the conduits of my kine
         Run cream, for wine.
All these, and better, Thou dost send
         Me, to this end,
That I should render, for my part,
         A thankful heart,
Which, fir’d with incense, I resign,
         As wholly Thine;
But the acceptance, that must be,
         My Christ, by Thee.
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We’ve presented a surprising amount of Robert Herrick (1591–1674) here at Poems Ancient and Modern: “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” “Delight in Disorder,” “To Keep a True Lent,” “Corinna’s Going A-Maying.” And in each case we’ve mentioned his two sides: the carpe-diem, Cavalier-tribe poet who wrote poems as sensual as any in the language, and the clergyman poet who wrote orthodox Christian verse. Along the way, we have also observed that that the distinction is not as sharp as it might seem, and that Herrick defended his poetry as springing from a single source:

I write of youth, of love, and have access
By these to sing of cleanly wantonness.
. . . I sing (and ever shall)
Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all.

Herrick loved to indulge metrical play, as in the use in Today’s Poem of alternating four- and two-foot lines, rhymed in couplets. Dimeter is hard, not really something English wants to do except in counting games and other chants. But, for the most part, Herrick uses his own dimeter lines to clip off a two-line thought and let the poem rock along through its catalogue of possessions: “That I should render, for my part, / A thankful heart, / Which, fir’d with incense, I resign, / As wholly Thine.”

Dedication page for Robert Herrick’s 1648 Hesperides (Wikimedia Commons)

If we are thankful, here on Thanksgiving, it’s reasonable to ask what we are thankful for. For Herrick, there in his parsonage, he notes he has “a cell / Wherein to dwell.” A little house, where “the threshold of my door / Is worn by th’ poor.” A little kitchen, some sticks to make a small fire, an egg from his chicken, milk from his cow — all enough for him to remember to thank the Lord for “the acceptance, that must be, / My Christ, by Thee.”

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