Sweetest of sweets, I thank you: when displeasure Did through my body wound my mind, You took me thence, and in your house of pleasure A dainty lodging me assigned.
Now I in you without a body move, Rising and falling with your wings: We both together sweetly live and love, Yet say sometimes, "God help poor Kings".
Comfort, I'll die; for if you post from me Sure I shall do so, and much more: But if I travel in your company, You know the way to heaven's door.
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📖 About this poem
Herbert wrote this as a kind of thank-you note to music itself, addressed the way you'd speak to a trusted friend who's just pulled you out of a dark spell. The opening is physical: displeasure "wounds" the body, and music lifts him clean out of it into a weightless, bodiless state, "rising and falling" with its wings as though he's become part of the melody rather than just a listener. That image of floating free of the body is the poem's real center of gravity, and it still lands because most of us know that exact feeling, the moment a song carries you somewhere your worries can't follow. The odd, almost throwaway line about praying for "poor Kings" hints at the turbulent world Herbert lived in, but he doesn't dwell there. The final stanza raises the stakes quietly: lose this comfort and he's undone, but keep it close and it leads straight to heaven's door. Small poem, enormous claim, gently made.
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