Herbert: An Offering

I read this through the other night and was initially bemused. I suspect most poems seem like verbal noise until read several times. By the third time through I realised this was a profound presentation of uniting the heart in a life of worship to God:

Come, bring thy gift. If blessings were as slow
As men's returns, what would become of fools?
What hast thou there? a heart? but is it pure?
Search well and see; for hearts have many holes.
Yet one pure heart is nothing to bestow:
In Christ two natures met to be thy cure.

O that within us hearts had propagation,
Since many gifts do challenge many hearts!
Yet one, if good, may title to a number;
And single things grow fruitful by deserts.
In public judgements one may be a nation,
And fence a plague, while others sleep and slumber.

But all I fear is lest thy heart displease,
As neither good, nor one: so oft divisions
Thy lusts have made, and not thy lusts alone;
Thy passions also have their set partitions.
These parcel out thy heart: recover these,
And thou mayst offer many gifts in one.

There is a balsam, or indeed a blood,
Dropping from heav’n, which doth both cleanse and close
All sorts of wounds; of such strange force it is.
Seek out this All-heal, and seek no repose,
Until thou find and use it to thy good:
Then bring thy gift, and let thy hymn be this;
 

                         Since my sadness
                         Into gladness
Lord thou dost convert,
                         O accept
                         What thou hast kept,
As thy due desert.

                         Had I many,
                         Had I any,
(For this heart is none)
                         All were thine
                         And none of mine:
Surely thine alone.

                         Yet thy favour
                         May give savour
To this poor oblation;
                         And it raise
                         To be thy praise,
And be my salvation.