This is clearly the result of indifference; an indifference, however, which grows very strange to us when we find that he _can_ write a lovely verse and even an exquisite stanza.
Greatly for its own sake, partly for the sake of illustration, I quote a poem containing at once his best and his worst, the result being such an incongruity that we wonder whether it might not be called his best _and_ his worst, because we cannot determine which.

He calls it _Hymn to God, my God, in my Sickness_.

The first stanza is worthy of George Herbert in his best mood.
Since I am coming to that holy room, Where with the choir of saints for evermore I shall be made thy music, as I come I tune the instrument here at the door, And what I must do then, think here before.
To recognize its beauty, leaving aside the depth and truth of the phrase, "Where I shall be made thy music," we must recall the custom of those days to send out for "a noise of musicians." Hence he imagines that he has been summoned as one of a band already gone in to play before the king of "The High Countries:" he is now at the door, where he is listening to catch the tone, that he may have his instrument tuned and ready before he enters.

But with what a jar the next stanza breaks on heart, mind, and ear! Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I[72] their map, who lie Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown That this is my south-west discovery, _Per fretum febris_--by these straits to die;-- Here, in the midst of comparing himself to a map, and his physicians to cosmographers consulting the map, he changes without warning into a navigator whom they are trying to follow upon the map as he passes through certain straits--namely, those of the fever--towards his south-west discovery, Death.

Grotesque as this is, the absurdity deepens in the end of the next stanza by a return to the former idea.