George Herbert's "Death"

I think Herbert's intent here is to express his thankfulness for the option of Heaven after life ends. The title makes the poem seem as if you will be reading something completely about the elements of death, but it's really the afterlife Herbert is focused on. I would consider the entire poem an apostrophe because the speaker is directing all of his thoughts and observations to Death "himself." It seems that this poem is divided into two parts. The first makes a description of the original negative thoughts the speaker had on death, and the second part talks about the positive aspect of death, which is afterlife or Heaven. Each section has three stanzas with twelve lines, which is the basic structure of the entire poem. There is also a rhyme scheme of ABBA CDDC, etc. It seems Herbert wanted to give this poem an important and discplined structure. The idea of Heaven and God must have played a very important role in his life as it is highlighted in his poetry.

To the speaker, death used to be a terrible thing. He describes it as an "uncouth, hideous thing" (1) and in line four says, "Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing." The latter strikes me as an odd description. If the speaker is talking about a particular dead person this would simply mean that he had his mouth open but of course could not use it because he was dead. On the other hand, since I think Herbert is talking about Death itself the line makes less sense. Maybe Herbert is just describing what Death makes of humans once they are taken. Basically, that they just decay lifelessly once gone from the Earth. That is, before the Lord died and gave death a new meaning of joyfulness and Heaven.

I noticed in the second part of the poem that the letter "g" was often alliterated. This occurs in the fourth and fifth stanzas. Line fifteen says "Thou art grown fair and full of graces," making death positive. The following line uses the word "good," and line seventeen says "For we do now behold the gay and glad." Not only are all of these "g" words alliterated with positive diction, but the word "God" also begins with the same letter. Perhaps this wasn't on purpose, since the poem is very religiously based. The last line of the poem gives a final thought through a small metaphor. This stanza gives a summary of what death brings, and then ends with "Making our pillows either down or dust" (24). I believe this is touching on the choice of Heaven or hell. Down pillows are representing the afterlife, while the pillows of dust refer to the idea of death before the Savior turned things around for the better.