by a sunne-beam

I have been reading George Herbert all day. I love George Herbert, and I am not even a little bit sorry. If George Herbert was a My Little Pony, he would be in a television show called "My Little Herbert: God is Magic" and he would probably be a unicorn, and his cutie mark would be a picture of a book inside a heart inside a church. I was initially going to post one of Herbert's sonnets about scriptural hermeneutics, tonight, but then I got distracted by sunbeams -- possibly because it was raining; anyway, the idea is that if I am very lucky, posting this poem tonight may mean that I will get up early and be awesomely productive tomorrow (because this is, on some level, very much a poem about how hard it is to get up in the morning). That's the plan, anyway, because I have a lot of work to do this weekend. Help me, George Herbert, you're -- wait, no, wrong story.

            I cannot ope mine eyes,
      But thou art ready there to catch
      My morning-soul and sacrifice:
Then we must needs for that day make a match.

            My God, what is a heart?
      Silver, or gold, or precious stone,
      Or starre, or rainbow, or a part
Of all these things, or all of them in one?

            My God, what is a heart,
      That thou shouldst it so eye, and wooe,
      Powring upon it all thy art,
As if that thou hadst nothing els to do?

            Indeed mans whole estate
      Amounts (and richly) to serve thee:
      He did not heav'n and earth create,
Yet studies them, not him by whom they be.

            Teach me thy love to know;
      That this new light, which now I see,
      May both the work and workman show:
Then by a sunne-beam I will climbe to thee.

—George Herbert (1593-1633), "Mattens" from The Temple, published posthumously in print in 1633. There is a better than average chance that I am going to write a whole dissertation chapter on George Herbert and the publication of The Temple and how friendship is magic.