VI. THE CAMPO SANTO 345

the other poems (in The Temple) drew me into learning most of them by heart,-the “Church Porch,” the “Dialogue,” “Employment,” “Submission,” “Gratefulness,” and, chief favourite, “The Bag,”-deliberately and carefully.¹ The code of feeling and law written in these verses may be always assigned as a standard of the purest unsectarian Christianity; and whatever has been wisest in thought or happiest in the course of my following life was founded at this time on the teaching of Herbert. The reader will perhaps be glad to see the poem that has been most useful to me, “Submission,”² in simpler spelling than in the grand editions:-

“But that Thou art my wisdom, Lord,

And both mine eyes are Thine,

My mind would be extremely stirred

For missing my design.

Were it not better to bestow

Some place and power on me?

Then should Thy praises with me grow,

And share in my degree.

But when I thus dispute and grieve

I do resume my sight,

And pilfering what I once did give,

Disseize Thee of Thy right.

How know I, if Thou shouldst me raise

That I should then raise Thee?

Perhaps great places and Thy praise

Do not so well agree!

Wherefore, unto my gift I stand,

I will no more advise;

Only do Thou lend me Thine hand,

Since Thou hast both mine eyes.”

111. In these, and other such favourite verses, George Herbert, as aforesaid, was to me at this time, and has been since, useful beyond every other teacher; not that I ever

¹ [A reference to the General Index will show how often Ruskin quoted Herbert. For a letter written by Ruskin to his mother about Herbert in 1845, see Vol. IV. p. 349 n.]

² [No. 68 in division iv. (“The Church”) of The Temple.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]