Singing still he soars and soaring ever singeth.
Herbert.
George Herbert, author of "The Temple," was born on 13 April, 1593; was of noble descent, and a younger brother of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. From his fifth to his twelfth year George probably lived at Oxford with his mother. He then went to Westminster School; thence to Trinity College, Cambridge (1609), where he obtained a Fellowship (1616) and early in 1619 was chosen Public Orator. In this capacity he wrote the letters of the University to kings, princes, and the great in general who visited it. He became a friend of Bacon and of Bishop Andrewes, Ludovick, Duke of Lennox, and James, Marquis of Hamilton. As a schoolboy he had written Latin epigrams against the Hildebrand of Scottish Presbyterianism, the learned and truculent Andrew Melville, for whose tyranny in Scotland James VI and I took an unconstitutional revenge when safe on the throne of England. In a war of Latin verse Andrew was very capable of holding his own.
Herbert, while at Cambridge, was a somewhat assiduous courtier of "gentle King Jamie," though we do not know that he gratified the monarch by adopting the Scottish and continental pronunciation of Latin and Greek. The death of James probably disappointed any hopes he may have had of State employment.
In 1627 he resigned his oratorship, and according to Izaak Walton retired to a country place in Kent where he meditated on the choice of a secular or saintly life. He preferred the saintly, took holy orders, lost his beloved mother in 1627, married Jane Danvers in 1629, and was presented to the living of Bemerton, between Wilton and Salisbury, in the next year. He died in 1633, and Walton must be consulted for "an almost incredible story of the great sanctity of the short remainder of his holy life". On the Sunday before his death he rose, took a musical instrument, and "sang to it such hymns as the angels and he and Mr. Ferrar" (of Little Gidding) "now sing in heaven".
His poems, "The Temple," were published in 1633, and their great popularity is a proof that piety had not wholly deserted the Anglican Church for the Sects. "The Temple" opens with "The Porch," a series of moral and religious counsels, in verses of six stanzas. The poem "Affliction" is autobiographical: at first, in his career, "There was no month but May". Then came maladies and the deaths of friends
Whereas my birth and spirit rather took
The way that takes the Town,
Thou didst betray me to a lingering book
And wrap me in a gown...
Ah, my dear God, though I am quite forgot,
Let me not love thee, if I love thee not.
Sacred poetry is of all kinds the most difficult. Herbert's is full of conceits, though he has not the extravagances that mar the work of Donne and Crashaw. Verses in the shape of altars and of wings are examples of extreme decadence, but these are rare. Herbert's simplest poem is his best, the famous
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die.