George Herbert

George Herbert's poetry sounds a genuine note of contrtion and humility. when he new that he would die of consumption, he charged his friend Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding with the fate of his poems, collected in The Temple, saying that he might burn them unless they might 'turn to the advantage of any dejected soul'. if this request seems modest, and all the more genuine for the poet seeking an expressly posthumus fame, then it represents a triumph of Herbert's spirituality over his earlier, world...