Productive discord and George Herbert's "Artillerie"

Abstract

Regarding the ways of learning, honor, and pleasure, the speaker concludes: I know all these, and have them in my hand.[...]not sealed, but with open eyes I flie to thee, and fully understand Both the main sale, and the commodities; And at what rate and price I have thy love; With all the circumstances that may move (11.According to his reading of stanza two, the speaker's submission undoubtedly moves the persona away from arrogance and toward if not fully into a posture of compliance.The Petrarchan laments of the previous lines turn into direct accusation: yet thou dost refuse.[...]the speaker implicitly calls back the riddling syllogism of stanza two where both conditional ("If I refuse") and conclusion ("Then I refuse") hinge on refusing.By the final stanza the speaker has "articl[ed]" with God in both the sense of charging him with accusation and stipulating anew the conditions of their covenant.[...]the final movement of the poem is to counter the very finitude bolstering this claim: the speaker says that he is God's "infinitely," that a quality of his being persists without end.