Affliction: II
Kill
me
not
ev'ry
day,
Thou
Lord
of
life;
since
thy
one
death
for
me
Is
more
than
all
my
deaths
can
be,
Though
I
am
in
broken
pay
Die
over
each
hour
of
Methusalem's
stay.
If
all
men's
tears
were
let
Into
one
common
sewer,
sea,
and
brine;
What
were
they
all,
compar'd
to
thine?
Wherein
if
they
were
set,
They
would
discolour
thy
most
bloudy
sweat.
Thou
art
my
grief
alone,
Thou,
Lord,
conceal
it
not:
and
as
thou
art
All
my
delight,
so
all
my
smart:
Thy
crosse
took
up
in
one,
By
way
of
imprest,
all
my
future
mone.
George Herbert
George Herbert, (born April 3, 1593, Montgomery Castle, Wales—died March 1, 1633, Bemerton, Wiltshire, Eng.), English religious poet, a major metaphysical poet, notable for the purity and effectiveness of his choice of words. A younger brother of Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, a notable secular metaphysical poet, George in 1610 sent his mother for New Year’s two sonnets on the theme that the love of God is a fitter subject for verse than the love of woman, a foreshadowing of his poetic and vocational bent.