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A Choice of George Herbert's Verse
Book by Thomas, R. S., Herbert, George
- GenresPoetry
95 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 14, 2025
I was surprised to find this edition of George Herbert's verse in my poetry section, until I saw the introduction by R.S. Thomas. Characteristically, he has chosen 'those poems which seem to me satisfactory as such'.
Herbert's mother was friends with Donne, placing him much earlier than I thought. She made sure her children got a good education and (after quoting Walton on her good qualities) he writes 'George is unlikely to have escaped so benevolent an influence'.
He became orator at Cambridge University and hoped for preferement at Court, but when the King (James) died, he took Holy Orders. When he fell ill 'like a good Anglican, he equated sickness with sin and good health with holiness'. Cured by a diet of his own devising he then married Jane Danvers. He was successful in his parish.
The Elizabethan age was a 'time of adventure and pioneering as well as of achievement.' Herbert was a contemporary of Shakespeare. 'Anglicanism represents the recovery of nerve after the loss of it by the mediaeval Church and was a product of the English mind at a seminal stage in its development. And the emphasis is on mind, for the appeal of Anglicanism was to the intellect via the language, as witness the case of John Donne."
Thomas characteristises the poets of the day as 'just as devout and punctilious as the best of the Puritans, and possibly a good deal warmer.'
'Like many another poet, more interested in what he had to say than in ways of saying it, he was no innovator, but took the language as he found it. Yet owing to his dates, he was able to do this with more relish than those born much later. As he says in 'The Sonne':
'Let forrain nations of their language boast,
What fine varietie each tongue affords: I like our language, as our men and coast:
Who cannot dresse it well, want wit not words'.
'There remains to ask, What is George Herbert's relevance to to-day? And this is bound up with the relevance of Christianity, and with the possibility of a fruitful relationship between Christ-ianity and poetry. The bridge between the two latter is the Incar-nation. If poetry is concerned with the concrete and the particular, then Christianity aims at their redemption and consecration. The poet invents the metaphor, and the Christian lives it. Herbert is first and foremost a Christian, but he is an Anglican, too. Is Anglicanism still a live issue? I think he shows that it can be. Is his day, it was allied to a swiftly emerging power. To-day it could still be more than something 'to shore against our ruins'. The decline of England as a major power need not mean that there are not other things to cultivate, other aims to pursue. This poet's description of prayer recurs, 'man well-drest'. He inherited the fruits of the Elizabethan Settlement, and was able to extract the poetry instead of having to argue and debate with his opponents. Gould not the removal of the 'white man's burden', as it were, give the twentieth century Englishman time for other things? And one of those things, one of the main things, as Herbert demonstrates, is both the possibility and the desirability of a friendship with God. Friendship is no longer the right way to describe it. The word now is dialogue, encounter, confrontation; but the realities engaged have not altered all that much.
'This, then, is Herbert's relevance for to-day. He commends a way of life for the individual that is still viable. It is reason, not so much tinged with, as warmed by emotion, and solidly based on order and discipline, the soul's good form. This way of life he celebrates in verse that is sometimes quaint, sometimes over-ingenious, but never trite. It escapes prettiness, and has rather, at times, the simplicity and gravity of great poetry. It is a proof of the eternal beauty of holiness.'
The beauty of an introduction can sometimes outshine the introduced... (as with Frieda Hughes introduction to Ariel).
Herbert's mother was friends with Donne, placing him much earlier than I thought. She made sure her children got a good education and (after quoting Walton on her good qualities) he writes 'George is unlikely to have escaped so benevolent an influence'.
He became orator at Cambridge University and hoped for preferement at Court, but when the King (James) died, he took Holy Orders. When he fell ill 'like a good Anglican, he equated sickness with sin and good health with holiness'. Cured by a diet of his own devising he then married Jane Danvers. He was successful in his parish.
The Elizabethan age was a 'time of adventure and pioneering as well as of achievement.' Herbert was a contemporary of Shakespeare. 'Anglicanism represents the recovery of nerve after the loss of it by the mediaeval Church and was a product of the English mind at a seminal stage in its development. And the emphasis is on mind, for the appeal of Anglicanism was to the intellect via the language, as witness the case of John Donne."
Thomas characteristises the poets of the day as 'just as devout and punctilious as the best of the Puritans, and possibly a good deal warmer.'
'Like many another poet, more interested in what he had to say than in ways of saying it, he was no innovator, but took the language as he found it. Yet owing to his dates, he was able to do this with more relish than those born much later. As he says in 'The Sonne':
'Let forrain nations of their language boast,
What fine varietie each tongue affords: I like our language, as our men and coast:
Who cannot dresse it well, want wit not words'.
'There remains to ask, What is George Herbert's relevance to to-day? And this is bound up with the relevance of Christianity, and with the possibility of a fruitful relationship between Christ-ianity and poetry. The bridge between the two latter is the Incar-nation. If poetry is concerned with the concrete and the particular, then Christianity aims at their redemption and consecration. The poet invents the metaphor, and the Christian lives it. Herbert is first and foremost a Christian, but he is an Anglican, too. Is Anglicanism still a live issue? I think he shows that it can be. Is his day, it was allied to a swiftly emerging power. To-day it could still be more than something 'to shore against our ruins'. The decline of England as a major power need not mean that there are not other things to cultivate, other aims to pursue. This poet's description of prayer recurs, 'man well-drest'. He inherited the fruits of the Elizabethan Settlement, and was able to extract the poetry instead of having to argue and debate with his opponents. Gould not the removal of the 'white man's burden', as it were, give the twentieth century Englishman time for other things? And one of those things, one of the main things, as Herbert demonstrates, is both the possibility and the desirability of a friendship with God. Friendship is no longer the right way to describe it. The word now is dialogue, encounter, confrontation; but the realities engaged have not altered all that much.
'This, then, is Herbert's relevance for to-day. He commends a way of life for the individual that is still viable. It is reason, not so much tinged with, as warmed by emotion, and solidly based on order and discipline, the soul's good form. This way of life he celebrates in verse that is sometimes quaint, sometimes over-ingenious, but never trite. It escapes prettiness, and has rather, at times, the simplicity and gravity of great poetry. It is a proof of the eternal beauty of holiness.'
The beauty of an introduction can sometimes outshine the introduced... (as with Frieda Hughes introduction to Ariel).
February 7, 2022
Some beautiful language and imagery, especially where the subject becomes more abstract. However, just a little too much of the 'typical' poems for God/faith. Of course, I understand this wasn't quite as cliched at the time of writing...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews