George Herbert
(born April 3, 1593, Montgomery Castle, Wales?died March 1, 1633, Bemerton,
Wiltshire
, Eng.) was an English religious poet, a major
metaphysical
poet, notable for the purity and effectiveness of his choice of words.
A younger brother of Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, a notable
secular
metaphysical poet, George in 1610 sent his mother for New Year’s two sonnets on the theme that the love of God is a fitter subject for verse than the love of woman, a foreshadowing of his poetic and vocational bent.
Britannica Quiz
Famous Poets and Poetic Form
Educated at home, at
Westminster School
, and at
Trinity College
, Cambridge, he was in 1620 elected orator of the university, a position that he described as “the finest place in the university.” His two immediate predecessors in the office had risen to high positions in the state, and Herbert was much involved with the court. During Herbert’s academic career, his only published verse was that written for special occasions in Greek and Latin. By 1625 Herbert’s sponsors at court were dead or out of favour, and he turned to the church, being ordained deacon. He resigned as orator in 1627 and in 1630 was ordained
priest
and became rector at Bemerton. He became friends with
Nicholas Ferrar
, who had founded a religious
community
at nearby Little Gidding, and devoted himself to his rural parish and the reconstruction of his church. Throughout his life he wrote poems, and from his deathbed he sent a manuscript volume to Ferrar, asking him to decide whether to publish or destroy them. Ferrar published them with the title
The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations
in 1633.
Herbert described his poems as “a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed between God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus, my Master, in whose service I have now found perfect freedom.” Herbert shares his conflicts with
John Donne
, the archetypal metaphysical poet and a family friend. As well as personal poems,
The Temple
includes doctrinal poems, notably “The Church Porch,” the first in the volume, and the last, “The Church Militant.” Other poems are concerned with church ritual.
The main resemblance of Herbert’s poems to Donne’s is in the use of common language in the rhythms of speech. Some of his poems, such as “The Altar” and “Easter Wings,” are “pattern” poems, the lines forming the shape of the subject, a practice
Joseph Addison
in the 18th century called “false wit.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
in the 19th century wrote of Herbert’s
diction
, “Nothing can be more pure, manly, and unaffected.” Herbert was a versatile master of metrical form and all aspects of the craft of verse. Though he shared the critical disapproval given the metaphysical poets until the 20th century, he was still popular with readers. Herbert also wrote at Bemerton
A Priest to the Temple: Or The Country Parson, his Character and Rule of Life
(1652). Herbert’s
Works
(1941; corrected, 1945), edited by F. Hutchinson, is the standard text.