They also try to show a psychological realism when describing the tensions of love.
George Herbert’s poem ‘Love’ combines metaphysical poetry with a strong feeling of sense and adoration. The range of Herbert’s poetry is limited; he only wrote on religious themes and used short lyrics. An aspect of Herbert’s work that strikes the reader when reading these poems is his direct colloquies with God, which are stated with intimacy but he never builds up into sentimentality.
Herbert’s poetry expresses the combination of intellect and sensibility and flexibility of attitude characteristic of metaphysical wit. But his use of imagery differs from Donne, another metaphysical poet. He does not draw his images from scientific or scholastic learning as Donne does but he uses everyday images. Despite the intellectual vigour and the subtlety of Herbert’s poems, they are always graceful and usually lucid. Moreover, they are expressed in language of purity. Herbert's poems are characterized by a precision of language, a metrical versatility, and an ingenious use of imagery or conceits that was favoured by the metaphysical school of poets.3 They include almost every known form of song and poem, but they also reflect Herbert's concern with speech--conversational, persuasive, proverbial. Carefully arranged in related sequences, the poems explore and celebrate the ways of God's love as Herbert discovered them within the fluctuations of his own experience.
In his poem ‘Love’ it is arranged within a conversation between a man and God. The poem is about a man and his devotion to God and his worry that God does not love him as much back. The poem is the ideal of metaphysical through the subject of religion and Herbert is showing physiological realism when describing the person’s love for God.
Like many of Herbert's poems this one presents a mini-drama - there are two characters: the poet and Love. Love is the hostess at a feast ("Love bade me welcome"), the poet feels unworthy to be there ("Guiltie of dust and sinne").
It doesn't take too much of an imaginative jump to see what the story symbolises. Love is God ("Truth, Lord"), interestingly described in feminine terms ("my deare"). The poet feels unworthy to enter into the feast of heaven, and God being a kind host, notices the reluctance ("quick-eye'd Love, observing me grow slack"), but the poet takes some convincing, has a counter argument for Love every time. A particularly good example is when the poet says he can't even look on God, but Love counters: "Who made the eyes but I?". He even has an argument for that! - "Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them". Love/God doesn't deny that the poet is sinful, but, in a reference to redemption by Christ says: "know you not … who bore the blame?". The poet then agrees to come in, but only in a serving role ("then I will serve"), but Love wants him to be a full guest ("You must sit down … and taste my meat"). Finally the poet is won over - "So I did sit and eat".
