Question- George Herbert as British poet of English literature.

Answer -

George Herbert (3 April, 1593 1 March, 1633) was a welsh poet, orator and priest of the Church of England. His poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognized as one of the foremost British devotional lyricists. He was born into an artistic and wealthy family and largely raised in England. He received a good education that led to his admission to Trinity college, Cambridge. He went there with the intention of becoming a priest, but he became the university' public orator and attracted the attention of King James-I. He served in the parliament of England in 1624 and briefly in 1625.

George Herbert was born 1593 in Montgomey, Montgomeryshire, wales the son of Richard Herbert (died 1596) and his wife Magdalen nee Newport, the daughter of Sir Richard Newport (1511-1570). He was one of 10 children. The Herbert family was wealthy and powerful in both national and local government and George was descended from the same shock as the Earls of Pembroke. His father was Member of Parliament, a justice of peace. His mother was patron and friend of Clergman and poet John Donne and other poets.

In 1628 or 1629, Herbert lodged at Dauntsey House in the north of witshire, the home of his stepfather's brother Henry Danvers and Henry's elderly widowed mother Elizabeth, lived the family of Henry's cousin Charles Danvers who is said to have had a desire for Herbert to marry his daughter Jane. They were married at Edington Church on 1629.

Herbert wrote poetry in English, Latin and Greek, shortly before his death. He sent a literary manuscript to his friend Nicholas Ferrar reportedly telling him to publish the poems if he thought they might "turn to the advantage of any defected poor soul". In 1633 all of his English poems were published in "The Tempest: Sacred poems and private Ejaculations, with a preface by Ferror. According to Izaak Walton, when Herbert sent the manuscript to Ferror, he said that "he shall find in it 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". Herbert used the format of the poems to reinforce the theme he was trying to portray. Beginning with "The Church Porch", they proceed via. "The Altar" to "sacrifice" and so onward through the collection. All of Herbert's surviving English poems are on religious themes and are characterized by directness of expression enlivened by original but apt conceits in which, in the metaphysical manner. In the windows, for example, he compares a righteous preacher to glass through which God's light shines more effectively than in his words. Richard Baxter said, "Herbert speaks to God like one that really believeth in God, and whose business in the world is most with God. Heart-work and heaven-work make up his books. Helen Gardner later added "Head-work" to this characterisation in acknowledgement of his "intellectual vivacity".

Visually too the poems are varied in such a way as to enhance their meaning, with intricate rhyme schemes, stanza combining different line length and other ingenious formal devices. The most obvious examples are pattern poems like "The Altar" in which the shorter and longer lines are arranged on the page in the shape of an altar. The visual appeal is reinforced by the conceit of its construction from a broken, stony Heart, representing the personal offering of himself as a sacrifice upon it. Built into this is an allusion to psalm 51 17: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart". In the case of "Easter wings" the words were printed sideways on two facing pages so that the lines there suggest out spread wings. The words of the poem are paralleled between stanzas as mimic the opening and closing of the wings.

The formal devices employed to convey that meaning are wide in range. In his meditation on the passage "our life is hid with Christ in God". The capitalized words "my life is hid in him that is my treasure", move across successive lines and demonstrate what is spoken of in the text. Opposites are brought together in "Bitter-sweet" for the same purpose. Eco and variation are also common. The exclamations at the head and foot of each stanza in "sighs and Grones" are one example. The dimishing truncated rhymes in "paradise" are another. There is also an echo-dialogue after each line in "Heaven", other examples of which are found in the poetry of his brother lord Herbert of Cherbury. Alternative rhymes are offered at the end of the stanzas in "The Water Course". While the "mary/Army Anagram" is represented in its title. In "The collar", Joseph summers argues, Herbert goes so far as to use apparent formlessness as a formal and thematic device; "the poem contains all the elements of order in violent disorder" until the end, when the final four lines regularity restores the reader's sense of "the necessity of order."

Herbert also wrote historical works, including "The Expedition to the Isle of Rhe" (Latin 1656; Eng. Trans, 1860) and The life and Raigne of King Henry the Eighth (1649) occasional verses (1665) shows him to have been a talented and original poet as well Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the 19th Century wrote of Herbert's diction, "Nothing can be more pure, many and unaffected." Herbert was a versatile master of metrical form and all aspects of the crafts 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).

...Prev | Next...