Teach me, my God and King,
         In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything
         To do it as for Thee.

         Not rudely, as a beast,
         To run into an action;
But still to make Thee prepossest,
         And give it his perfection.

         A man that looks on glass,
         On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
         And then the heav'n espy.

         All may of Thee partake:
         Nothing can be so mean,
Which with his tincture—"for Thy sake"—
         Will not grow bright and clean.

         A servant with this clause
         Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
         Makes that and th' action fine.

         This is the famous stone
         That turneth all to gold;
For that which God doth touch and own
         Cannot for less be told.

- The Elixir (1633)

George Herbert (1593-1633) is my favorite poet. I keep his collection, The Temple, on my desk and daily read a poem or two from it. It is filled with some of the most technically brilliant and creative devotional poems in the English language. Of the 167 poems in the book, 116 of them have meters that are not repeated. T.S. Eliot wrote, “The exquisite variations of form in the . . . poems of The Temple show a resourcefulness of invention which seems inexhaustible, and for which I know no parallel in English poetry.”

But, not only is Herbert a master of the English language, he was a man of profound faith, serving as parish priest for three years before his untimely death at the age of 39 from tuberculosis. The puritan Richard Baxter, 48 years after his death, wrote: “Herbert speaks to God like one that really believeth a God, and whose business in this world is most with God. Heart-work and heaven-work make up his books.”

The Poem

One of the reasons Herbert has maintained such a prominent spot in the poetry hall-of-fame is the fact that—despite his enormous technical skill—one does not need to be a skilled practitioner to understand his poetry. He uses common language and concrete images throughout all of his poetry to convey meaning. In his short treatise on pastoral ministry, Herbert writes of the Bible referring to hatchets and ploughs, “it shows that things of ordinary use are not only to serve in the way of drudgery, but to be washed and cleansed and serve for lights even of heavenly truths,” (The Country Parson). Herbert saw all of life as a means to illuminate “heavenly truths.” His poem, “The Elixir” shows us just that.

Leland Ryken writes of the poem: “It encapsulates the Protestant version of the sacramental life—not the multiplication of images and rituals inside a church, but bringing a divine and heavenly perspective into every aspect of daily life,” (The Soul in Paraphrase). Perhaps 1 Cor 10:31, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God,” is the inspiration.

Teach me, my God and King,
         In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything
         To do it as for Thee.

         Not rudely, as a beast, ["rudely" = without thought]
         To run into an action;
But still to make Thee prepossest, ["prepossest" = the owner beforehand]
         And give it his perfection. ["his" = God's]

The second line of the first stanza, “In all things Thee to see” is the prayer of the whole poem. But this cannot be done “rudely, as a beast” but requires thoughtfulness to make all deeds perfect in seeing them connected to, and for God.

A man that looks on glass, ["glass" = window]
         On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
         And then the heav'n espy. ["espy" = see]

         All may of Thee partake:
         Nothing can be so mean, ["mean" = common, humble]
Which with his tincture—"for Thy sake"—
         Will not grow bright and clean.

Herbert uses the image of a man looking through a window here. How odd would it be for a man to look at a window, but fail to look through it? Nothing is so base or common that we cannot look through it as a window to see heavenly reality. Whatever is done “for Thy sake” will shine with God’s presence.

  A servant with this clause ["this clause" = "for Thy sake"]
         Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
         Makes that and th' action fine.

         This is the famous stone
         That turneth all to gold;
For that which God doth touch and own
         Cannot for less be told.

Armed with the knowledge that all things can be done for God’s sake, even “drudgery” like sweeping a room, can become divine. The reference to the “famous stone” ties in with the title of the poem. “Elixir belonged to the fanciful world of medieval alchemy (forerunner of modern chemistry). It was the fantastic substance (sometimes pictured as a stone) that was imagined to have the property of turning base metals into gold. Herbert turns this bit of fantasy into a metaphor in which seeing God in everything is the attitude (the elixir) that will transform all of life from something unfulfilling into something fulfilling,” (Ryken, The Soul in Paraphrase).

Whatever you are doing, praying, cleaning the house, sending emails, all can become windows into Ultimate Reality. And by this, we find that we are actually able to enjoy our work and leisure the way were meant to: for Thy sake.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men. – Col 3:23