1Having been tenant long to a rich lord,
2 Not thriving, I resolvèd to be bold,
3 And make a suit unto him, to afford
4A new small-rented lease, and cancel th’ old.
5In heaven at his manor I him sought;
6 They told me there that he was lately gone
7 About some land, which he had dearly bought
8Long since on earth, to take possessiòn.
9I straight returned, and knowing his great birth,
10 Sought him accordingly in great resorts—
11 In cities, theaters, gardens, parks, and courts:
12At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth
13 Of thieves and murderers; there I him espied,
14 Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died.
"Redemption," a sonnet by the Metaphysical poet George Herbert, sums up the premise of Christian faith in 14 short lines. Using the conceit of God as a landlord and humanity as a tenant farmer seeking a "new [...] lease," the poem suggests that God's generosity, kindness, and love are unlike anything else on earth: this "lord" is willing to lay down his very life to give his tenant a fresh start. "Redemption" was first published in Herbert's important posthumous collection The Temple (1633).
I'd been renting farmland from a rich lord for some time but hadn't had much success. So I decided to be brave and go ask my landlord if he'd rent me a new parcel of land and release me from my contract on the old one. I went to look for him at his mansion in heaven, but when I got there, his people told me he had just gone to see about some land he'd bought (at great cost) down on earth a long time ago so that he could officially take on ownership of it. So I hurried right back to earth. Knowing that my landlord was an aristocratic, powerful guy, I went looking for him only in the fanciest places. I checked great cities, theaters, gardens, parks, and royal courts without success. Finally, I heard the ugly noise of a laughing crowd of lowlifes and saw my lord among them. Right away, he said, "You may have what you came to ask for," and died.
“Redemption” tells the tale of a struggling tenant farmer seeking a new lease from his landlord. Rather than having to beg for or earn this favor, however, the speaker is astonished to find that this “lord” readily sacrifices himself to pay for the speaker’s new beginning. The landlord here is really a metaphor for God, who the poem implies offers followers “redemption” (or forgiveness and new life) not from a comfortable, lordly perch in the clouds but through generous and loving sacrifice.
God, the poem suggests, doesn’t behave as people might expect an almighty being to behave. When the speaker decides to give up on his old land and start a “new lease” (here a metaphor for a “new lease” on life itself, a fresh start), he goes to ask this favor from his “lord” in “heaven at his manor.” Yet this lord isn't there, nor is he in any of earth’s “great resorts”—the fanciest “gardens, parks and courts” the world has to offer. The speaker finally finds his lord living among lowly “thieves and murderers,” about to be put to death. His last words to the speaker are simply, “Your suit is granted.”
Again, the speaker's landlord represents God—a figure who doesn’t appear only in show-offy, elegant places or grant favors like a condescending billionaire, but who instead offers people the “redemption” they long for through an act of self-sacrifice. The image of the speaker's lord allowing himself to be executed like a criminal represents Christ's death on the cross. And the poem suggests that it’s through Christ’s sacrifice that the speaker gets the “new lease,” the fresh start, he was hoping for.
Christ’s terrible death, strangely enough, earns the “redemption” that the speaker expected God to grant or deny through plain old almighty power. What’s more, that “redemption” is boundless: God offers it to everyone, the poem implies—“thieves and murderers” included.
In this poem's view, then, Christian redemption simply doesn’t work the way that earthly power does. Christ is stunningly generous: he demands no payment from his followers in exchange for redemption. Instead, he pays for them with his own suffering and death.
Having been tenant long to a rich lord,
Not thriving, I resolvèd to be bold,
And make a suit unto him, to afford
A new small-rented lease, and cancel th’ old.
"Redemption" begins by setting up what sounds like an ordinary 17th-century anecdote. The speaker, a tenant farmer, hasn't been doing so well: the land he's been trying to work isn't "thriving." He decides that he's going to go to the "rich lord" he rents from and ask him to "cancel" his old contract in exchange for "a new small-rented lease" instead—that is, a fresh, humble, affordable plot of land.
So far, so businesslike. But notice how the language here characterizes the speaker and his situation. He doesn't just speak of renting from a landlord, but from a "rich lord," a notably wealthy and powerful guy. Such a person, the poem suggests, isn't someone you can just casually ask a favor from: the speaker has to "resolv[e] to be bold," working up his courage before he can go make his request.
In other words, there's already a question of power here. The tenant relies on the landlord and his goodwill for his livelihood; the landlord makes the decisions. And the tenant seems rather nervous about what's going to happen when he makes his "suit" (that is, his formal request).
Even in this prosaic beginning, readers might smell a metaphor. There's a big hint that this poem is about more than a literal tenant-landlord situation in the poem's punning title, "Redemption":
This poem will thus tell the story of Christian redemption through a story of earthly redemption. Of course, the Christian story is an earthly one, too. Christ's death and resurrection, this poem will argue, didn't just take place on earth: they're also woven right into the fabric of everyone's daily life.
In many ways, this is a characteristic poem for George Herbert, a passionate and brilliant clergyman whose poetry explored his faith. In other ways, it's a little surprising. Many of the poems in Herbert's lone posthumous book, The Temple, experiment with form in innovative ways—but this poem, at first glance, looks like a plain old sonnet:
But Herbert doesn't use this conventional form so conventionally! Toward the end, the speaker will break from the expected alternating rhyme scheme to do something surprising; keep an eye out for the moment when the rhymes change.
In heaven at his manor I him sought;
They told me there that he was lately gone
About some land, which he had dearly bought
Long since on earth, to take possessiòn.
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Get LitCharts A+I straight returned, and knowing his great birth,
Sought him accordingly in great resorts—
In cities, theaters, gardens, parks, and courts:
At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth
Of thieves and murderers; there I him espied,
Who straight,
Your suit is granted,
said, and died.
This poem, like many that Herbert and his contemporaries wrote, is built around a conceit, an elaborate extended metaphor. Here, Herbert uses the tale of a tenant farmer asking his landlord for a favor to stand for the relationship between humanity and the Christian God.
Herbert's conceits were often gently funny and deadly serious at the same time, and this one is no exception. The speaker's tale of going to call at his landlord's "manor" and then finding that the guy is away on a business trip could sound totally ordinary, except for the fact that the "manor" is in "heaven" and the business trip stands in for the incarnation of Christ (that is, God taking on a human body and living on earth).
By matter-of-factly mixing the everyday and the divine, the poem both gives readers a nudge in the ribs—this definitely isn't just about a tenant and a landlord!—and makes the meaningful point that there is no separation between the everyday and the divine. The "redemption" the poem discusses is the stuff of daily life, and God offers it to everyone, farmers, lords, and "thieves" alike.
On a related note, the poem's conceit also helps to point out the difference between the way that people wield power and the way that God wields power. When the speaker, learning his landlord isn't at his heavenly "manor," goes to seek him on earth, he does what seems sensible based on how most "rich lord[s]" behave: he checks the fanciest places, the places where aristocrats of "great birth" hang out.
But this "lord" doesn't work like that. The speaker is shocked to find him among "thieves and murderers," and even more shocked when he answers the speaker's request before the speaker even asks him about it, immediately declaring, "Your suit is granted" (in other words, "You can have what you came to ask for"). With that, he promptly dies—on the cross, readers can assume—and it's through that death that the speaker's request is granted. God doesn't just offer people redemption, God pays for their redemption.
If Christ is a landlord, the poem's conceit thus suggests, he's a landlord unlike any on earth. Divine power, unlike human power, is humble, self-sacrificing, and boundlessly loving.
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Get LitCharts A+Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
Decided, made up one's mind to do something. The accent over the "e" here means that readers should pronounce the word with three syllables: re-SOL-ved.
"Redemption" is an English sonnet: a 14-line poem with a set rhyme scheme, written in iambic pentameter (lines with a five-beat da-DUM rhythm: "In hea- | ven at | his man- | or I | him sought").
At first glance, this old form might seem surprisingly conventional for an innovative poet like Herbert, who wrote concrete poems in the shape of wings and altars and developed his own organic forms to suit his subjects. On a second look, though, readers will see that not only has Herbert chosen this form carefully, he's played around with it, too.
Like all English sonnets, this one is built from three quatrains and a closing couplet. This form allows a poem to build slowly toward a final one-two punch—precisely what Herbert does here with the dramatic moment in which Christ grants the speaker's request the very second before he dies.
But the tricksy, inventive rhyme scheme Herbert uses here means that readers can also interpret this poem as two quatrains and two tercets, with the last six lines divided up EFF / EGG. The possibility of the tercet reading introduces a pattern of threes into the poem, perhaps evoking the Trinity: the Christian godhead composed of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In this, Herbert follows in the footsteps of fellow Christian poets like Dante, who used weaving terza rima as a reminder of the trinitarian God in the Divine Comedy.
Like most sonnets, "Redemption" is written in iambic pentameter. That means that each line is built from five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here's an example from the beginning of the second stanza:
In hea- | ven at | his man- | or I | him sought;
This steady, pulsing meter falls into the rhythm of footsteps or heartbeats, creating a meditative backdrop to the speaker's tale.
But as in much iambic poetry, the rhythm doesn't stay perfect throughout. The very first line, for example, does something different:
Having | been ten- | ant long | to a | rich lord,
This line starts, not with an iamb, but its opposite: a trochee, a foot with a DUM-da rhythm. The end of the line does something even more striking, pushing the line's two remaining stresses into the last foot—a spondee, with an emphatic DUM-DUM rhythm.
These slight variations start the poem with some extra energy and tension, setting up a tale of surprise. After all, few tenant farmers expect to meet with much generosity from the "rich lord[s]" who own the land—let alone acts of astonishing self-sacrifice.
At first, it seems as if "Redemption" will use the classic rhyme scheme of an English sonnet: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. But listen to what happens instead:
ABAB CDCD EFFE GG
Rather than sticking to alternating rhymes all the way through, the poem introduces an unexpected EFFE sequence—just at the moment when the speaker is shocked to discover that Christ is being executed among the "ragged mirth" (or rude laughter) of "thieves and murderers," not luxuriating with the mighty in the world's "great resorts." Christ's sacrifice, this change suggests, shakes the whole world into a new shape.
Some critics note that the rhyme scheme at the end of the poem can also be read, not as a traditional four-line quatrain and two-line couplet, but as two three-line tercets: EFF EGG. This three-line reading bakes the three-part shape of the Holy Trinity (the Christian godhead, composed of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) right into the poem.
The poem's speaker is a struggling tenant farmer who longs for a "new [...] lease"—and, in this poem's metaphorical world, that's not just a new lease on land but on life. In other words, this farmer seeks "redemption," the exchange of an old way of life for a blank slate and a fresh start. Searching for the "lord" who can grant his wish, the speaker is shocked to finally discover him, not enjoying a powerful man's pleasures in "gardens, parks, and courts," but in the humble form of Christ, living and dying among "thieves and murderers."
In a sense, this speaker is a Christian everyman, discovering God's infinite generosity with awe and astonishment. But as in much of Herbert's poetry, this speaker can also be read as a voice for Herbert himself—a passionately religious man who gave up what could have been a glittering career in politics to serve as a humble country parson.
Readers might reasonably interpret this poem's setting as the whole universe. Through the conceit of a tenant farmer asking a favor from his landlord, the poem concisely lays out the story of Christianity—a story that Herbert saw as universal and eternal. The speaker's journey spans time and space: he quests from God's "manor" in "heaven" to all the "cities, theaters, gardens, parks, and courts" of the world, and finally ends up at the Crucifixion itself. The sheer scale of this quest suggests that God and God's love are the same everywhere and always.
But the conceit here also grounds the poem in Herbert's own world. A tenant farmer asking a landlord for a new lease would have been a normal transaction in the 17th-century English countryside where Herbert worked and wrote. By planting a cosmic journey on English soil, the poem reminds readers that the divine weaves right through the everyday.
A passionate, poetic soul, George Herbert (1593-1633) lived a humble life as a country priest, serving a small English parish that bore the exuberant name of Fuggleston-cum-Bemerton. Herbert, born a nobleman and raised a scholar, often struggled with the limitations his calling imposed on his life; he could easily have made a splash in a royal court, but he felt inexorably drawn to the priesthood.
While he never found public poetic success during his short lifetime, Herbert is now remembered as one of the foremost of the "Metaphysical Poets." This group of 17th-century writers, which included poets like John Donne and Andrew Marvell, shared a combination of brilliant intellect, passionate feeling, and religious fervor. Herbert was not the only one of these poets to work as a clergyman or to explore his relationship with God in poems that sometimes sound more like love songs than hymns.
The Temple (1633), in which "Redemption" first appeared, was Herbert's only poetry collection, and it might never have seen the light of day. Dying at the age of only 39, Herbert left the book's manuscript to his friend Nicholas Farrar, telling him to publish it if he felt it would do some "dejected poor soul" some good. Farrar, suspecting it would, brought to press what would become one of the world's best-known and best-loved books of poetry. The Temple went on to influence poets from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to T.S. Eliot to Wendy Cope.
George Herbert lived and wrote during an unsettled period of British history. During Herbert's childhood, Britain was enjoying a golden age. The powerful Elizabeth I was on the throne, and Britain was both a formidable military power and a literary treasure house, boasting writers like Shakespeare, Spenser, and Marlowe. But the great "Virgin Queen" died without children in 1603, and her successor, James VI and I of Scotland and England, was not quite such a unifying figure. Many of his people were either skeptical of him or downright hostile to his rule. (The infamous Guy Fawkes, who was executed for trying to blow up James's Parliament, is one vivid example.)
The anti-monarchist plots James grappled with would eventually feed into an unprecedented uprising. By the time Herbert died in 1633, James's son Charles I was on the throne—but he wouldn't stay there for long. In 1649, a rebellion led by Oliver Cromwell would depose Charles and publicly behead him, a world-shaking event that upended old certainties about monarchy, hierarchy, and even God's will.
Though Herbert didn't live to see Charles's fall, he was still one of a generation of writers grappling with dramatic change and loss, reaching out to God for strength. This poem's reflections on God's awe-inspiring generosity express Herbert's deep, consoling faith in an ultimately benevolent universe.
A Brief Biography — Visit the Poetry Foundation to learn more about Herbert's short, brilliant life.
Herbert's Influence — Read contemporary poet Wendy Cope's essay on what Herbert means to her.
The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.
The George Herbert Group — Learn more about Herbert's life and work at the website of a society dedicated to his legacy.
The Temple — Read about the important posthumous collection in which this poem first appeared.
A Short Documentary — Watch a brief video about Herbert, including images of his church.