Hello and welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network.

I'm David Kerr.

Today's poem is by George Herbert, who lived from 1593 to 1633, another poet who lived a relatively short life.

Many of Herbert's poems were about subjects that William Harmon

referred to as monotonous. Almost always scriptural, he says. Now, I don't know that I would use the

word monotonous, but I think what he's trying to say is clear. They seem on the surface more like hymns,

the way we think of hymns than we would think of traditional poems on the surface.

But the more you read them, you begin to recognize that there is a, that there's a variety of

perspectives that he drops into these poems, that there's scenarios that are being enacted.

And I think that that's really interesting.

Today's poem is called Love 3, which came from a collection called The Temple and was published shortly after his death.

Among the other poems in this collection were apocalyptic poems, which followed this.

And William Harmon writes about this in the anthology, 100 Greatest Poems.

He wrote poems called Death, Doms Dead, Judgment, and Heaven.

And as Harmon writes, these all record the experience of a soul

brought into the presence of the God who is love.

In this particular poem, Herbert personifies love,

and the voice of this poem, the narrator of this poem,

is having a conversation with love.

So this is Love 3 from George Herbert.

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back, guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed love, observing me grow slack from my first entrance in, drew near to me, sweetly

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