The violence of passion in these poets is absent in George Herbert, and even the presence of the beatific vision, as a conscious experience of the soul known after the long travail of its search for beauty, is not in the least discernible. Still, the conviction that there is a higher beauty than that seen on earth, and that in truth lies this beauty, is felt beneath the mildness of Herbert’s devotion. In two sonnets, which he sent to his mother in 1608, he laments the decay of any true love for God among the poets, and contrasts the beauty of God with the beauties of the amorists. To him the beauty of God lies in the discovery.
“Such poor invention burns in their [the amorists’] low minde,
Whose fire is wild, and doth not upward go
To praise, and on Thee, Lord, some ink bestow.
Open the bones, and you shall nothing finde
In the best face but filth; when, Lord, in Thee
The beauty lies in the discoverie.”
(S. i.)
He is, accordingly, content to sing the praises of God.
“Let foolish lovers, if they will love dung,