George Herbert was too great to be himself much injured by the narrowness of the field whence he gathered his symbols; but his song will be the worse for it in the ears of all but those who, having lost sight of or having never beheld the oneness of the God whose creation exists in virtue of his redemption, feel safer in a low-browed crypt than under "the high embowed roof.

In summers day, when Phoebus fairly shone, I saw a Bull as white as driven snowe, With gilden hornes embowed like the moone, In a fresh flowring meadow lying lowe: Up to his eares the verdant grasse did growe, And the gay floures did offer to be eaten; But he with fatnes so did overflows, That he all wallowed in the weedes downe beaten, Ne car'd with them his daintie lips to sweeten:

But let my due feet never fail, To walk the studious cloister's pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antique pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light.

Little can be traced of the "studious cloister," the "storied window," or the "high embowed roof;" but the ivy climbs with parasitic fondness over its gable, or thrusts its rootlets as holdfasts into its crumbling wall.