Say what you mean: George Herbert's "Jordan I"

Jordan. (I)

WHo sayes that fictions onely and false hair Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty? Is all good structure in a winding stair? May no lines passe, except they do their dutie             Not to a true, but painted chair?   Is it no verse, except enchanted groves And sudden arbours shadow course-spunne lines? Must purling streams refresh a lovers loves? Must all be vail’d, while he that reades, divines,             Catching the sense at two removes?   Shepherds are honest people; let them sing: Riddle who list, for me, and pull for Prime: I envie no mans nightingale or spring; Nor let them punish me with losse of rime,             Who plainly say, My God, My King.

There is a danger when reading poetry of judging that poetry's quality according to how difficult it is to understand.  ("Huh.  I don't get it.  It must be great poetry.") This opens the reader up for prizing lots of gobbledygood that, if translated into plain English, turns out to be nonsense.*


This is the kind of thing George Herbert is talking about in his poem Jordan I (he wrote another, Jordan II, which continues discussing this theme). "Is there in truth no beauty?" he asks. ** To Herbert, all the most ornate and complex fabrications the human imagination can conjure are no match in beauty against plain, simple truth. 

Most of us who have had poetry assigned to our reading against our will can sympathize with Herbert's bemoaning, "Must all be vail'd?" Although I've said before that I love T.S. Eliot and the type of metaphorical poetry that overflows with simile and metaphor, under all that symbolism must be a foundation of truth. Otherwise the poem is meaningless.


*I'm looking at you, Gertrude Stein.
**Simultaneously, if unknowingly, naming a Star Trek episode.