Background to the poem
Mary Sidney Herbert wrote in the late sixteenth century. Her devout Calvinist form of Protestant belief is captured in this simple poem of faith and obedience.
The poem begins with a conventional image of God lighting the way and establishes the sense that everything the poet does will be in response to God’s pure word, which will clear the paths ahead of her and guide her every step.
The second stanza refers to the ‘grief’ and anguish Mary Sidney Herbert feels. How does this stanza reflect the nature of her relationship with God? In the third stanza, the poet talks of the dangers and temptations that may lie around her. How does she convey her response to those imagined dangers?
In the final stanza, Mary Sidney Herbert proclaims her belief in scripture and the word of God that has been passed down to her. How does she use language to end the poem on a note of passionate, willing subjugation to God’s plan?
To what extent do you think the elegant formality and regularity of rhythm and rhyme support the meaning of the poem?
About Mary Sidney Herbert
Mary Sidney Herbert was an influential and talented poet, translator and patron of the arts in Elizabethan England. She was also the sister of the courtier and poet Philip Sidney. She completed the translations of the Psalms into English which he had begun but had been unable to finish before his early death. Mary Sidney Herbert wrote over a hundred Psalm translations, using a remarkable range of verse forms. (A meditation upon psalms was seen as an acceptable form of writing for women in the Elizabethan period.)
Mary Sidney Herbert celebrated her brother’s life and accomplishments in her verse and acted as a patron to other writers,such as Edmund Spenser, who paid tribute to her brother. She was a highly educated woman, studying not simply scripture and rhetoric but French, Italian and Latin. Even in her own lifetime, she was celebrated as an accomplished poet by male contemporaries.
Read more about Mary Sidney Herbert in the
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Founded by Andrew Motion and Julie Blake in 2012, developed by The Poetry Archive with The Full English, and funded by the Department for Education, Poetry by Heart is a national poetry recitation competition open to all pupils and students in England aged between 14 and 18. The Poetry By Heart website is a shared asset of The Poetry Archive and The Full English. It is maintained and developed by The Full English as a resource for a national poetry recitation competition and for teaching and learning about poetry.