![]() Below I will walk through it stanza by stanza, and then I will present a new partial musical setting of it that makes intertextual connections with scripture. One of the poems from this volume is “The Agony,” a meditation on the suffering that Christ bore out of love for humanity. It has been in print continuously ever since. On his deathbed he gave his friend Nicholas Ferrar a manuscript of all the poems he had written throughout his life, telling him to publish it if he thought it might “turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul,” and if not, to “burn it for I and it are less than the least of God’s mercies.” Thankfully, Ferrar chose the former, and The Temple was published posthumously in 1633. ![]() He was appointed to a small rural parish near Salisbury, where he served for only three years before contracting tuberculosis at age thirty-nine. After a short career in oration and then politics, he shifted courses to become a pastor. Born in Wales, he studied rhetoric at Cambridge University, becoming fluent in Latin and Greek and beginning an avocation of writing verse. ![]() ![]() ![]() A staple of English literature curricula, George Herbert (1593–1633) is one of the best religious poets of any era. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |