Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Classic English Literature Podcast. If you’re in America, or celebrate like Americans, Happy Thanksgiving!  This is, indeed, the most American of holidays – a day set aside to offer our gratitude for an orgy of gluttony.  Of course, other countries set aside days of Thanksgiving, either officially or unofficially, and nearly every culture which we have record of made the giving of thanks part of their ritual lives.

To mark the day, I thought I’d offer a poem by 17th century scribbler George Herbert called “Gratefulness.”  Herbert, as well as a poet, was an orator and Anglican priest, and his writing explores the complex intersection of religious faith and human experience. His most famous work is "The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations"  – a title that has not aged well – published posthumously in 1633. These poems explore the speaker's personal relationship with God, reflecting on the challenges of faith and humility in the Christian life.

“Gratefulness” is one of the poems from “The Temple.”  It’s eight stanzas of four lines each with alternating rhymes.  The tricky bit is the rather, well, jerky meter: three tetrameter lines followed by a fourth line of iambic monometer.  Yes, monometer – one foot.  Two syllables.  Most of each stanza rolls along in a very familiar, ballad-like, almost sing-songy rhythm, then line four slams the brakes.  Bit of poetic whiplash.  Have a listen.

Thou that hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, a grateful heart.
See how thy beggar works on thee
By art.

He makes thy gifts occasion more,
And says, If he in this be crossed,
All thou hast given him heretofore
Is lost.

But thou didst reckon, when at first
Thy word our hearts and hands did crave,
What it would come to at the worst
To save.

Perpetual knockings at thy door,
Tears sullying thy transparent rooms,
Gift upon gift, much would have more,
And comes.

This notwithstanding, thou wenst on,
And didst allow us all our noise:
Nay thou hast made a sigh and groan
Thy joys.

Not that thou hast not still above
Much better tunes, than groans can make;
But that these country-airs thy love
Did take.

Wherefore I cry, and cry again;
And in no quiet canst thou be,
Till I a thankful heart obtain
Of thee:

Not thankful, when it pleaseth me;
As if thy blessings had spare days:
But such a heart, whose pulse may be
Thy praise.

I think it’s a strange little poem, actually.  It begins with a seemingly earnest petition to God to give the speaker a grateful heart – there seems to be a bit of playful irony in line 2’s request – give me something that will make me grateful for the things you’ve given me.  Then the earnestness reveals itself as artifice – that abrupt line 4: “by art.”  So is the poem ironically ungrateful?  Or ironically already grateful?  In either case, the speaker’s request really becomes an occasion for praise.  

The rest of the poem is the argument for the speaker’s request.  If I don’t have a grateful heart, then I can’t appreciate anything else I have.  Besides, God, you knew when you made us that we’d need an awful lot of attention.  And you know you like it – yes, you do. Even though our groans are not as nice as angel hymns.  So come on, please?  Please? Come on!  Give me a grateful heart, one that’s thankful all the time.  Come on!

So here’s a question: is the desire to be thankful the same as being thankful?  Or very like it, anyway?  Gratitude is, I think, necessarily consequential. Its power, or effect, resides not in the person who shows it or in the essential authenticity of their intentions, but manifests rather in the person who receives it. That is, it confirms to the other person that you recognize their graciousness and acknowledge your debt to that graciousness.  It’s not the same as, say, love.  Wanting to love and actually loving are two different things.  God, in this poem, understands the speaker’s gratefulness despite the speaker’s imperfect rendering of that gratefulness.  The poem implies that true gratitude only comes from true grace, and humans lack such true grace in their fallen state.  But it’s the wanting, the striving, that’s important.  

Thanksgiving, giving thanks, is an act, and one paradoxically noble and humbling.  But gratitude, gratefulness, is a state of being, an understanding of one’s dependence on grace – however one may conceive of it.

Happy thanksgiving, everyone.  We’ll talk again soon.