George Herbert
born April 3, 1593, Montgomery Castle, Wales
died March 1, 1633, Bemerton, Wiltshire, Eng.
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.
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.
