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George Herbert
The Temple 1633
(sent poems to friend Nicholas Ferrar
"to be either published or burnt" (died not knowing which--lifelong
conflict of pride in fame vs. self-abnegation; so last act
is a compelling expression of incompatibility; poems are always
both a record of a true struggle and a testament to pride.
Gave up the decision)
"Donne's most original disciple"--Kenner
- distinguished Welsh family; mother a friend of Donne's
- married Jane Danvers 1629, took order in church 1630
- known as "holy Mr. Herbert"--3 year stint, died of consumption
- The Temple published posthumously.
- works w. religious imagery and xian typology
- Donne=poet of religious doubt, strain, anxiety; Herbert=poet
of religious faith, of submission, of acceptance (outdated?)
- poet of "inner weather"--Aldous Huxley
- Herbert works out conflicts in poems
Doug Bush
- claims of God and the great world
(had a distinguished court career first, "too great" a pride
in great wealthy welsh family; liked clothes, court-like company;
very loyal, even obsequious, to the king (Walton's biography)
- poems about struggle "to make the will of a proud and passionate
Herbert bend gladly"
- impression of being overheard rather than read (seems unaware
of audience)
- last illness magnified sense of unfitness and futility;
sense of God's distance
- skilled musician
- gives us a picture of order, strength, and beauty of best
of 17th c. Anglicanism
- quiet endings "So I did sit and eat"
- friend of Donne and Bacon, but no imagery of science. "Highest
truth must be plainly dressed"
- also avoided Jonsonian "surface classicism" (esp. of pastoral)
Joseph Summers on Herbert
- tried to be a courtier; as Latin
Orator wrote ornamental poems to individuals: King James,
Bishop Andrews, Prince Henry, Prince Charles, Queen Anne,
Bacon, yet English poems do not mention surviving person
- English poetry addressed, sometimes
indirectly but usually directly to God
- The Temple had big impact on Laudians,
Puritans, royalists and parliamentarians --first book for
which each poem had a title selected by author. Also it
is structured as a kind of narrative--unique. "Rash of volumes"
after 1633 containing only devotional poems (as opposed
to mixed--Donne)--as influential as 1590's Astrophil and
Stella sequence
- 3 sections: The Church-porch, The
Church, and the Church militant, "long and rather strange
'prophetic' poem about the westward movt. of both the Church
and Sin. We should read great lyrics of central section--The
Church--in terms of churchporch--long didactic poem 462
lines.
- Opening stanza conceives of a reader
"who is a worldly young man of the contemporary ruling class.
He assumes his intelligence, his pleasure in verse and wit,
and his more-or-less-enlightened self-interest."--so incentive
will be in worldly terms.
- Thou, whose sweet youth and early
hopes enhance/ Thy rate and price, and mark thee
for a treasure;/ hearken unto a Verser, who
may chance/ Rhyme thee to go, and make a bait
of pleasure.
- begins with Lust, "least important
of deadly sins"--will proceed through other flesh sins--to
sloth and avarice, which affect society, to spiritual sins,
anger, envy, and pride.
- Emphasizes both Aristotelian and
Xian virtues which oppose sins; ends with love of neighbors
and love of God. This is an ascent, after which youth arrives
at Church.
- Stupidity of evil" "It is most
just to throw that [third drink] on the ground, / Which
would throw me there, if I keep the round." Self defense.
"If God's image move thee not, let thine."
- Strives to be engaging and entertaining:
Gentry like sheep are "gone to grass, and in the pasture
lost."
- Jonsonian: identifies good morals
with good manners: "COURTESY is the desire to
- make things easy for others and
to please them--and surely that is congruent with charity:
"Conversation and argument should be polite, not angry or
hoggish.
- Conversation monopolist=glutton
- You should sacrifice all for a
friend, but not if you are married: "married man...has no
right to sacrifice primary obligations to sentimental allegiances
not to be generous with what does not belong to him
- "sharpness of judgment, examination
of popular assumptions, deflation of high-flown sentiments"
- Eclectic: widsom="take all that
is given" (love, wealth, language)--you can use it
- POETRY AS PUBLIC PRAYER; Jonsonian--"public
has more promises, more love"
- Plainness: When once thy foot enters
the church, BE BARE..../Kneeling ne'er spoiled silk stockings:
quit thy state."
- Church-porch is pre-xian: Church
is xian. first is a "ceremonial cleansing" --no profane
or evil readers allowed. "Avoid, Profaneness, come not hear:?
Nothing but holy, pure, and clear,/ Or that which groaneth
to be so,/ May at his peril further go"--Milton's fit though
few; Jonson?
- The church: subject is love of
God, not activities of Man--The Altar "built of the poet's
broken heart" is emblem of volume.
- First person: reader to identify
or overhear voice.
- a PICTURE OF SPIRITUAL CONFLICTS--pictorial
- Forms: hymns, complaints, cries,
laments, examinations, quarrels, rejoicings, promises.
- Winding of "The Star" ("Winding
is their fashion/ Of Adoration") extends to echo poem
"Heaven", hidden acrostic "Our life is hid with Christ
in God", poems based on puns on initials, syllables, words,
a "pruning" poem--Paradise, "A Wreath" (Marvells' coronet),
a circular poem ("Sin's Round"), different kinds of "broken
forms ("Denial" and "Grief")
- inner transformation of external
form, dissolution of form in Church monuments, pattern
poems.
- Except for sonnets, Herbert rarely
repeated a form--29 different stanzaic patterns
- "herbert devoted his 'utmost
art' to the making of his poems--yet problem in Jordan
about writing for the self. Predicament about personal
fame. Donne's regrets.
- In some ways best combines Donne
and Jonson (personal AND rhetorical) but doesn't really
reflect either in style. Donne in conceits, relation to
God; Jonson in public sense of religion. Judgement.
- Great monosyllabic lines: "I struck
the board and cried, 'No more" etc.
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