Virtue by George Herbert

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
    The bridal of the earth and sky;
The dew shall weep thy fall to night,
    For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave,
    Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye;
Thy root is ever in its grave,
    And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
    A box where sweets compacted lie;
My music shows ye have your closes,
    And all must die

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
    Like seasoned timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
    Then chiefly lives.
-George Herbert

I chose this poem because I found the dichotomy between the world and the virtuous very interesting. The most basic definition of the poem is that everything in the world is doomed to end, even the most beautiful, and only the most virtuous amongst us has the chance to live on. Plus, I thought the wording sounded really pretty :).

The poem obviously has some religion connotations. The only thing that has the ability to survive the ravager that is time is a virtuous soul, and the only way for one to live throughout eternity would be in the afterlife, meaning that you must get to heaven to survive. This makes quite a bit of sense that Herbert these things, as, in addition to being a poet, he was also an Anglican priest.
The poem is composed in four stanzas of four lines each, and in the first three stanzas, he makes a metaphor for the inevitability of death. In each stanza he presents an element of the world in a beautiful way, and then crushes it by explaining its mortality.

The first stanza speaks of the day; it is “so cool, so calm, so bright” words that are certainly positive, it makes the day a good thing, and even the dew weeps at the days lost to night. The day is an element of beauty so wonderous that even inanimate objects weep for the loss of it. And that is the key point, that the day is lost to night. Even the most beautiful is equally susceptible to being quelled by time, and it is this first example of death that sets the theme of the poem.
The second stanza is much the same as the first, it describes something that is both beautiful and fleeting, in this case a rose. And a rose is indeed beautiful, it has a vibrant and daring color, so much so that those who look upon it rashly are apt to weep tears and need to wipe their faces. But then Herbert must mention that the rose is already halfway in its grave, as its roots are in the ground. Yes, the rose is beautiful like the day, but similarly so, it is doomed to die, and it is even closer to its grave than the day is.

The third stanza is a again a repetition of Herbert's formula. He presents the spring as beautiful, even more so than a rose or the day, because it contains both in abundance. Herbert presents the spring as the time of year when everything sweet in the year is compacted into one season, and uses this to say that not just certain things, but everything will die.


 And then the fourth stanza arrives, and joyous day! Something lives! And this something is the virtuous soul, because, unlike the world stuck in its mortal coils, the virtuous soul is immortal, and though all the four things in the poem are described as sweet, it is the virtue that separates the soul from those things that die, from the whole world that must by necessity turn to coal.