Brittle crazie glasse
July 29, 2008
George Herbert (1593-1633) would walk twice a week across Salisbury Plain from his little parish at Bemerton to the great cathedral, where he delighted not only in the music, but also in the stained glass windows. He saw in them a metaphor for preaching.
THE WINDOWS.
LORD, how can man preach thy eternall word ?
He is a brittle crazie glasse :
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.
But when thou dost anneal in glasse thy storie,
Making thy life to shine within
The holy Preachers, then the light and glorie
More rev’rend grows, and more doth win ;
Which else shows watrish, bleak, and thin.
Doctrine and life, colours and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and awe: but speech alone
Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
And in the eare, not conscience ring.
Two notes:
- In the second stanza, the word ‘anneal‘ refers to the process of heating and then cooling glass to soften it and make it less brittle, and to fix the colors in the glass–a lovely image of sanctification.
- It felt good to hold my old Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol.1in my hands. Perhaps only English majors can understand.
