Commentary

Although people weep for many reasons - joy, pride, pain, sorrow - in this poem George Herbert is writing specifically about tears as an expression of grief. And while many critics regard it as one of his less impressive works, it is worthy of our attantion because only someone who has experiencd great depths of despair could convey so movingly their feelings of misery and frustration.

There is always a temptation to look for autobiographical parallels in Herbert's poetry, and we know that this is one of his later verses so it could well have been written at a time of personal bereavement. By the late 1620s his mother Magdalene and several brothers and sisters had died, so there would have been many occasions for him to grieve, and no doubt the sorrow he experienced at such times would have coloured his writing. But the cause of the grief he expresses here is frustration, not bereavement.

As we know, George Herbert's relationship with his God was a tortured one. and in his verses he frequently complains about what he considers to be a lack of response to his prayers and a failure to relieve his sufferings - tellingly, no less than five of his poems bear the title 'Affliction'. And in this simple poem he concludes that only copious weeping will serve to get his God's attention; mere versing is not powerful enough for this purpose. And in a typical Herbertian punchy concluding line, the utter despair expressed is a veritable cry from the heart.

The form of this poem is most unusual. With nineteen lines, it is an augmented 'sonnet and a half', having two additional couplets plus the abrupt, dramatic conclusion. It is almost as though, in striving to set down the depth of his emotions, Herbert has found the conventional scheme too constraining in this instance.