The poem is called _Denial_.

I give only a part of it.
When my devotions could not pierce Thy silent ears, Then was my heart broken as was my verse; My breast was full of fears And disorder.
O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue To cry to thee, And then not hear it crying! All day long My heart was in my knee: But no hearing! Therefore my soul lay out of sight, Untuned, unstrung; My feeble spirit, unable to look right, Like a nipt blossom, hung Discontented.
O cheer and tune my heartless breast-- Defer no time; That so thy favours granting my request, They and my mind may chime, And mend my rhyme.
It had been hardly worth the space to point out these, were not the matter itself precious.
Before making further remark on George Herbert, let me present one of his poems in which the oddity of the visual fancy is only equalled by the beauty of the result.
THE PULLEY.
When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessing standing by, "Let us," said he, "pour on him all we can: Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie, Contract into a span." So strength first made a way; Then beauty flowed; then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay, Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure, _Rest_ in the bottom lay.
"For if I should," said he, "Bestow this jewel also on my creature, He would adore my gifts instead of me, And rest in nature, not the God of nature: So both should losers be.
"Yet let him keep the rest-- But keep them with repining restlessness: Let him be rich and weary, that, at least, If goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to my breast." Is it not the story of the world written with the point of a diamond?
There can hardly be a doubt that his tendency to unnatural forms was encouraged by the increase of respect to symbol and ceremony shown at this period by some of the external powers of the church--Bishop Laud in particular.

Had all, however, who delight in symbols, a power, like George Herbert's, of setting even within the horn-lanterns of the more arbitrary of them, such a light of poetry and devotion that their dull sides vanish in its piercing shine, and we forget the symbol utterly in the truth which it cannot obscure, then indeed our part would be to take and be thankful.

But there never has been even a living true symbol which the dulness of those who will see the truth only in the symbol has not degraded into the very cockatrice-egg of sectarianism.

The symbol is by such always more or less idolized, and the light within more or less patronized.