Reformation Spirituality: The Religion of George Herbert
(George Herbert, in his poetic skill and the depth of the ...)
George Herbert, in his poetic skill and the depth of the spiritual experiences he explores, may be the greatest of all religious poets. This is a study of the specific religious experiences and beliefs that Herbert writes about, both in his poetry and in his prose. As such, it also examines the spiritual landscape of seventeenth-century England, a period, for all of its controversies, still dominated by the understanding of God and the human condition articulated by Martin Luther and systematized by John Calvin. Reformation spirituality, which was different both from medieval Catholicism and late Protestantism, is itself little understood by literary historians, who have tended to look to medieval or Counter-Reformation ideas and practices or to a simplistic distinction between "Anglicans" and "Puritans" as ways of understanding the religion of the time. This study presents Reformation spirituality phenomenologically, from the inside. Just as Reformation spirituality reflects Herbert's poetry, Herbert's poetry illuminates Reformation spirituality, showing the experiential and mystical dimensions of an important religious tradition.
(George Herbert (1593-1633) is widely regarded as the grea...)
George Herbert (1593-1633) is widely regarded as the greatest devotional poet in the English language. His volume of poems, The Temple, published posthumously in 1633, became one of the most widely read and influential collections of the seventeenth century. Almost 400 years after they were first published in Cambridge by the 'printers to the Universitie', Cambridge University Press is pleased to present the definitive scholarly edition of Herbert's complete English poems, accompanied by extensive explanatory and textual apparatus. The text is meticulously annotated with historical, literary and biblical information, as well as the modern critical contexts which now illuminate the poems. In addition to the lively introduction and notes, this edition includes a glossary of key words, an index of biblical quotations, and the authentic texts of Herbert's work.
The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of George Herbert, Vol. 2 of 3: For the First Time Fully Collected and Collated With the Original and Early ... Inedited Poems and Prose From the Williams M
(Excerpt from The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Geo...)
Excerpt from The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of George Herbert, Vol. 2 of 3: For the First Time Fully Collected and Collated With the Original and Early Editions and Mss; And Much Enlarged With, Hitherto Unprinted and Inedited Poems and Prose From the Williams Mss; Etc, Translation of the Whole of the Latin and Greek Verse and Lat
Religion stands a-tiptoe in our land, Ready to pass to the American strand.
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The Temple: The Poetry of George Herbert (Christian Classic)
(George Herbert, a priest at Salisbury Cathedral in sevent...)
George Herbert, a priest at Salisbury Cathedral in seventeenth-century England, is known as the author of the most famous religious poem in the English language, The Temple. This collection contains a mild modernization of Herbert's complete poems.
(Love bade me welcome yet my soul drew back Guilty of dust...)
Love bade me welcome yet my soul drew back Guilty of dust and sin But quick eyed Love observing me grow slack From my first entrance in Drew nearer to me sweetly questioning If I lacked anything A master of form and feeling George Herbert wrote poetry in both English and Latin that is imbued with dazzling imagery ardent faith and worldly wit This new edition of his complete poetry includes his collection of English verse The Temple containing such masterpiece as Redemption Affliction Love and The Collar which express a profound intimate and sometimes tortured relationship with God Also included in this volume are new translations of Herbert s Latin poetry from the moving Memoriae Matris Sacrum depicting his heartbreak after the death of his mother to the epigrams of Passio Discerpta narrating the events of the crucifixion Throughout Herbert brings his constant wit to bear on anger sorrow desperation wonder praise and above all love Edited by John Drury and Victoria Moul Love bade me welcome yet my soul drew back Guilty of dust and sin But quick eyed Love observing me grow slack From my first entrance in Drew nearer to me sweetly questioning If I lacked anything A master of form and feeling George Herbert wrote poetry in both English and Latin that is imbued with dazzling imagery ardent faith and worldly wit This new edition of his complete poetry includes his collection of English verse The Temple containing such masterpiece as Redemption Affliction Love and The Collar which express a profound intimate and sometimes tortured relationship with God Also included in this volume are new translations of Herbert s Latin poetry from the moving Memoriae Matris Sacrum depicting his heartbreak after the death of his mother to the epigrams of Passio Discerpta narrating the events of the crucifixion Throughout Herbert brings his constant wit to bear on anger sorrow desperation wonder praise
The church porch, with notes and a selection of Latin hymns
(Leopold Classic Library is delighted to publish this clas...)
Leopold Classic Library is delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive collection. As part of our on-going commitment to delivering value to the reader, we have also provided you with a link to a website, where you may download a digital version of this work for free. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. Whilst the books in this collection have not been hand curated, an aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature. As a result of this book being first published many decades ago, it may have occasional imperfections. These imperfections may include poor picture quality, blurred or missing text. While some of these imperfections may have appeared in the original work, others may have resulted from the scanning process that has been applied. However, our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. While some publishers have applied optical character recognition (OCR), this approach has its own drawbacks, which include formatting errors, misspelt words, or the presence of inappropriate characters. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with an experience that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic book, and that the occasional imperfection that it might contain will not detract from the experience.
(George Herbert (1593-1633) has come to be one of the most...)
George Herbert (1593-1633) has come to be one of the most admired of the metaphysical poets. Though he is a profoundly religious poet, even secular readers respond to his quiet intensity and exuberant inventiveness, which are amply showcased in this selection.
Herbert experimented brilliantly with a remarkable variety of forms, from hymns and sonnets to pattern poems, the shapes of which reveal their subjects. Such technical agility never seems ostentatious, however, for precision of language and expression of genuine feeling were the primary concerns of this poet, who admonished his readers to dare to be true. An Anglican priest who took his calling with deep seriousness, he brought to his work a religious reverence richly allied with a playful wit and with literary and musical gifts of the highest order. His best-loved poems, from The Collar and Jordan to The Altar and Easter Wings, achieve a perfection of form and feeling, a rare luminosity, and a timeless metaphysical grandeur.
(George Herbert (1593-1633) is widely regarded as the grea...)
George Herbert (1593-1633) is widely regarded as the greatest devotional poet in the English language. His profound influence can be seen in the lasting popularity of his verse. This selection of one hundred lyric poems by Herbert is designed for readers to enjoy the beauty, spirituality, accessibility and humanity of his best verse. Each poem uses the authoritative text from the acclaimed Cambridge edition of Herbert's poems, presenting them in their original spelling in a clear and elegant format. The selection includes such well-loved lyric verses as 'Love bade me welcome', 'Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing', 'I struck the board and cry'd, No more' and 'Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright'. A preface by Helen Wilcox, editor of the Cambridge edition, celebrates the key features of Herbert's poetry for a new generation of readers.
George Herbert was a Welsh-born English poet, orator, and Anglican priest. Herbert's poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognized as "a pivotal figure: enormously popular, deeply and broadly influential, and arguably the most skillful and important British devotional lyricist."
Background
George Herbert was born 3 April 1593 in Montgomery, Powys, Wales, the son of Richard Herbert, Lord of Cherbury (d. 1596) and his wife Magdalen née Newport, the daughter of Sir Richard Newport (1511–70). He was one of ten children. The Herbert family was wealthy and powerful in both national and local government, and George was descended from the same stock as the Earls of Pembroke. His father was a Member of Parliament, a justice of the peace, and later served for several years as high sheriff and later custos rotulorum (keeper of the rolls) of Montgomeryshire. His mother, Magdalen, was a patron and friend of clergyman and poet John Donne and other poets, writers and artists. Donne would stand in as George's godfather after Lord Herbert's death when George was three years old. In later years, Herbert's elder brother Edward (who assumed his late father's barony) was a soldier, diplomat, historian, poet, and philosopher whose religious writings led to his reputation as the "father of English deism".
Education
Herbert entered Westminster School at or around the age of 12 where he became a day pupil, although later he was elevated to the level of the residential scholar.
After graduating from Westminster School he was admitted on scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1609, where he graduated first with a Bachelor's and then with a Master's degree in 1616 at the age of 23. Herbert excelled in languages, rhetoric, and music. He went to university with the intention of becoming a priest, but when eventually he became the University's Public Orator he attracted the attention of King James I and may well have seen himself as a future Secretary of State.
Appointed a fellow of Trinity, he taught Latin and Greek grammar until he was made university praelector in rhetoric in 1617. Instead of giving conventional lectures on the classics, he used an oration by James I as his text, thus flattering his way to prospects of a career at court. By lecturing on a modern author, he also identified himself with a progressive academic effort to break the educational stranglehold of Ciceronianism. In addition, he lauded the "New Science" of Francis Bacon. Such bold modernity was typical of this enlightened young aristocrat, who dressed expensively, disdaining the sober university regulations about clothing. Though committed by his fellowship to enter the priesthood, Herbert wanted to emulate his brothers: the eldest, Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, was an ambassador who became a minor poet and the founder of English deism; another, Henry, was a courtier and parliamentarian who became the master of revels. In 1620 George was elected to "the finest place in the University, " that of the public orator. As such, he wrote official letters to dignitaries and delivered Latin orations to them when they visited Cambridge.
Doubly moved by conviction and an ambition to become a secretary of state, Herbert supported the peace policy of King James I and denounced the horrors of war in an oration before one of those visitors, Prince Charles, who was eager for war with Spain. The same motives induced Herbert to become a member of Parliament in 1624. But the King's death in the next year put the militarists in power and ended his secular prospects.
About 1626 he entered deacon's orders. In 1627 his mother died, and the funeral sermon preached by Donne was published with Latin and Greek poems written by Herbert in her memory. Two years later he resigned his university post.
Ordained a priest on September 19, 1630, he officiated for less than 2 1/2 years as rector of Bemerton in Wiltshire, occupying the parsonage with his wife, six servants, and three orphaned nieces. His charity extended to generous donations to repair churches.
At Bemerton, Herbert completed A Priest to the Temple (published in 1652), a prose work on how to be an ideal person. He also revised and greatly added to some 72 religious poems which he had previously composed. These poems were published posthumously as The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (1633). This work won high praise in the 17th century, but after the 13th edition (1709) it was not published again for 90 years. Since 1799, however, it has been printed with growing frequency. The Victorians found it uplifting and quaint but were biased by Izaak Walton's charming, inaccurate life of George Herbert (1670), which overconcentrates on his brief priesthood and transforms him into a saintly paragon. The poems in The Temple are sequentially related. Though superficially simple, they are profoundly complex in art, meaning, and allusiveness, reflecting Herbert's expert knowledge and love of music. They conduct the reader from the Church Porch into the Church, tracing man's spiritual and physical growth as a resistant soul struggling against a God who seeks to establish His temple in the human heart. The volume concludes with a verified history of the Church Militant and an envoy.
(Excerpt from The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Geo...)
Religion
He took up his duties in Bemerton, a rural parish in Wiltshire, about 75 miles southwest of London in 1630. Here he preached and wrote poetry; also helping to rebuild the church out of his own funds.
In 1633 Herbert finished a collection of poems entitled The Temple, which imitates the architectural style of churches through both the meaning of the words and their visual layout. The themes of God and love are treated by Herbert as much as psychological forces as metaphysical phenomena.
Suffering from poor health, Herbert died of tuberculosis only three years after taking holy orders. On his deathbed, he reportedly gave the manuscript of The Temple to Nicholas Ferrar, the founder of a semi-monastic Anglican religious community at Little Gidding (a name best known today through the poem Little Gidding by T. S. Eliot), telling him to publish the poems if he thought they might "turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul", and otherwise, to burn them.
Politics
In 1624 George became a Member of Parliament, representing Montgomery. While these positions were suited to a career at court and James I had shown him the favor, circumstances worked against him: the King died in 1625, and two influential patrons of Herbert died later in the decade. However George Herbert's only service to parliament may have already ended in 1624 or since, although a Mr. Herbert is mentioned as a committee member, there is no record in the Commons Journal for 1625 of Mr. George Herbert (a distinction carefully made in the records of the preceding parliament).
Views
But even in his experimental verse, Herbert displays his control of technique, his sense of form, and his musical ear.
Herbert's poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognised as "one of the foremost British devotional lyricists. "
As he was dying, Herbert turned his English poems over to Ferrar to decide whether they should be burned or put into print.
They owe much to the model of Donne's divine poems, but they are less eccentric and less violently emotional.
The elements of metaphysical poetry are present, though subdued.
Quotations:
"A Heart alone Is such a stone, As nothing but Thy pow'r doth cut.
Wherefore each part Of my hard heart Meets in this frame, To praise thy Name: That, if I chance to hold my peace, These stones to praise thee may not cease. "
Membership
In 1624, supported by his kinsman the 3rd Earl of Pembroke, Herbert became a Member of Parliament, representing Montgomery.
Personality
Bold modernity was typical for this enlightened young aristocrat, who dressed expensively, disdaining the sober university regulations about clothing.
Quotes from others about the person
Henry Vaughan called him "a most glorious saint and seer".
Connections
George Herbert married to Anne Danvers in 1629, but in1633 he divorced.