George Herbert

by abdo Wed Apr 06, 2011 3:22 pm

George
Herbert

For
other people named George Herbert, see George
Herbert (disambiguation).

George Herbert
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Portrait by Robert White in 1674 ([You must be registered and logged in to see this link.])
Born	3 April 1593(1593-04-03) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], Wales
Died	1 March 1633(1633-03-01) (aged 39) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], England
Occupation	Poet, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

George Herbert (3
April 1593 – 1 March 1633) was a Welsh born English poet, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Being born into an
artistic and wealthy family, he received a good education which led to his
holding prominent positions at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. As a student at Trinity College,
Cambridge, England,
George Herbert excelled in languages and music. He went to college with the
intention of becoming a priest, but his scholarship attracted the attention of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Herbert served in parliament
for two years. After the death of King James and at the urging of a friend,
Herbert's interest in ordained ministry was renewed. In 1630, in his late thirties
he gave up his secular ambitions and took [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
in the Church of
England, spending the rest of his life as a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] of the little parish of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
with [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] St Andrew,
near [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. He was
noted for unfailing care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them
when they were ill, and providing food and clothing for those in need.[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] said of him"a
most glorious saint and seer".^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
Throughout his life he wrote religious poems characterized by a precision of
language, a metrical versatility, and an ingenious use of imagery or conceits
that was favoured by the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]} [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] described
him as a "soul composed of harmonies".^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
Herbert himself, in a letter to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] said of
his writings, "they are a picture of spiritual conflicts between God and
my soul before I could subject my will to Jesus, my Master".^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
Some of Herbert's poems have endured as hymns, including "King of Glory, King
of Peace" (Praise), "Let All the World in Every Corner
Sing" (Antiphon) and "Teach me, my God and King" (The
Elixir).^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]} A
distant relative is the modern Polish poet [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

Early life

Herbert was born in [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
in Wales.
His family was wealthy, eminent, intellectual and fond of the arts. His mother
Magdalen was a patron and friend of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and other poets;^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
his older brother [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], later Lord
Herbert of Cherbury, was an important poet and philosopher, often referred to
as "the father of English [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]".
Herbert's father Richard
Herbert, Lord of Cherbury died when George was three, leaving a widow and
ten children.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

Herbert entered [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
at or around the age of 12 where he became a day student.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
Though sometime after he was elevated to the level of scholar. Herbert later
was admitted on scholarship to Trinity College,
Cambridge in 1609 where he graduated first with a Bachelors and then with a
masters degree in 1613 at the age of 20.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
After graduating from Westminster
School and Trinity
College, Cambridge (where he achieved degrees with distinction), Herbert
was elected a major fellow of his college. In 1618 he was appointed Reader in [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and in 1620 he was elected to the
post of Cambridge
University orator, whose
duties would be served by poetic skill. He held this position until 1628.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

In 1624 he became a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
representing [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
While these positions were suited to a career at court, and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] had shown him favour, 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).^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

Priesthood

He took up his duties in [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], a rural parish in [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], 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.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

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 [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] are treated by Herbert
as much as [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
forces as [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

Suffering from poor health,
Herbert died of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
only three years after taking holy orders. On his deathbed, he reportedly gave
the manuscript of The Temple to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], the
founder of a semi-monastic Anglican religious community at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (a name best known
today through the poem [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]), 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.

Works

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Herbert's
"Easter Wings", a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] in which the work is not only meant to be
read, but its shape is meant to be appreciated: In this case, the poem was
printed (original image here shown) on two pages of a book, sideways, so that
the lines suggest two birds flying upward, with wings spread out.

In 1633 (see [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]), all of
Herbert's poems were published in The Temple:
Sacred poems and private ejaculations, edited by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. The
book went through eight editions by 1690.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] edited in
1652 Herbert's Remains, or sundry pieces of that Sweet Singer, Mr. George
Herbert, containing A Priest to the Temple, or the countrey parson,
Jacula Prudentum, &c. Prefixed was an unsigned preface by Oley. The
second edition appeared in 1671 as A Priest to the Temple or the Country
Parson, with a new preface, signed Barnabas Oley. These pieces were
reprinted in later editions of Herbert's Works. The manuscript of The
Country Parson was the property of Herbert's friend, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], who
gave it to Oley; the prefaces were a source for [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s memoir of
Herbert.

All of Herbert's English
surviving poems are [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], and some have been used as [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] said of
them I found in them a strain of piety which I could not but admire.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
They are characterised by directness of expression and some [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] which
can appear quaint. Many of the poems have intricate rhyme schemes, and
variations of lines within stanzas described as 'a cascade of form floats
through the temple'.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

An example of Herbert’s
religious poetry is “The Altar.” A "pattern
poem in which the words of the poem itself form a shape suggesting an
altar, and this altar becomes his conceit for how one should offer himself as a
sacrifice to the Lord. He also makes allusions to scripture, such as Psalms
51:17, where it states that the Lord requires the sacrifice of a broken heart
and a contrite spirit.

Herbert also wrote A
Priest to the Temple (or The Country Parson) offering practical
advice to clergy. In it, he advises that "things of ordinary use"
such as ploughs, leaven, or dances, could be made to "serve for lights
even of Heavenly Truths".

His Jacula Prudentium
(sometimes seen as Jacula Prudentum), a collection of pithy proverbs
published in 1651, included many sayings still repeated today, for example
"His bark is worse than his bite." Similarly oft quoted is his Outlandish
Proverbs published in 1630.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] said,
"Herbert speaks to God like one that really believeth a God, and whose
business in the world is most with God. Heart-work and heaven-work make up his
books". Dame [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] adds "head-work"
because of his "intellectual vivacity".

Herbert wrote poems in Greek
and in Latin. The latter mainly concern ceremonial controversy with the
Puritans, but include a response to Pope [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s
treatment of the ROMA AMOR anagram.He was also a collector of 'Outlandish
proverbs' some of which are used in his poem 'The Sacrifice'.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
and he wrote in many poetic forms, appropriate to their theme,and invented, as
it were, to embody them ^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}

Herbert influenced his fellow
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] who, in
turn, influenced William
Wordsworth.

George Herbert's poetry has
been set to music by several composers, including Ralph Vaughan
Williams, Lennox
Berkeley, Benjamin
Britten, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].