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John Drury "Music at Midnight, the Life and Poetry of George Herbert"
George Herbert "The Country Parson and Selected Poems"
Unusual territory for me but an unexpectedly enjoyable tangent from another read. George Herbert lived 1593 -1633, his last three years being spent as rector/parson of a small country church. His reputation was made by a manuscript, passed on to a friend shortly before his death, which contained a number of personal devotional poems detailing his spiritual longings and conflicts. Published soon after his death, these poems, titled "The Temple", were an instant bestseller and have been greatly admired ever since by poets as diverse as Samuel Coleridge, T.S. Eliot, and Seamus Heaney. Some of them, I think, have subsequently been turned into hymns. I find them remarkable for their craftmanship, simplicity and depth. He's categorised as one of "the metaphysical poets".
His Biography by John Drury is well researched and very interesting, but for me distinctly hard-going, the reason being that the author examines Herbert's life through his poems. As the poems tend to have layers of meaning - both an everyday and a spiritual/devotional - these need longer to attempt to understand than a simple read through. I knew little about life in the reigns of James I and Charles I, just before the Civil War, and this biography gives a good flavour of the times.
The Country Parson is Herbert's only prose work, @70-80 brief pages, again published posthumously. It offers practical (and perhaps at times over-idealistic) advice to rural clergy and was apparently influential well into the nineteenth century. For me, it's not remotely on a par with the poems, but of course is not intended to be. It does have points of interest - given Herbert was writing @1632 it offers insights into country life of those times and how a parson was perceived by others.
"The country parson is a lover of old customs, if they be good and harmless; and the rather, because country people are much addicted to them, so that to favour them therein is to win their hearts, and to oppose them therein is to deject them."
However, " ....answers (from the congregation. i.e. Amens etc) are not to be done in a hudling, or slubbering fashion, gaping, or scratching their head, or spitting even in the midst of their answer."
George Herbert "The Country Parson and Selected Poems"
Unusual territory for me but an unexpectedly enjoyable tangent from another read. George Herbert lived 1593 -1633, his last three years being spent as rector/parson of a small country church. His reputation was made by a manuscript, passed on to a friend shortly before his death, which contained a number of personal devotional poems detailing his spiritual longings and conflicts. Published soon after his death, these poems, titled "The Temple", were an instant bestseller and have been greatly admired ever since by poets as diverse as Samuel Coleridge, T.S. Eliot, and Seamus Heaney. Some of them, I think, have subsequently been turned into hymns. I find them remarkable for their craftmanship, simplicity and depth. He's categorised as one of "the metaphysical poets".
His Biography by John Drury is well researched and very interesting, but for me distinctly hard-going, the reason being that the author examines Herbert's life through his poems. As the poems tend to have layers of meaning - both an everyday and a spiritual/devotional - these need longer to attempt to understand than a simple read through. I knew little about life in the reigns of James I and Charles I, just before the Civil War, and this biography gives a good flavour of the times.
The Country Parson is Herbert's only prose work, @70-80 brief pages, again published posthumously. It offers practical (and perhaps at times over-idealistic) advice to rural clergy and was apparently influential well into the nineteenth century. For me, it's not remotely on a par with the poems, but of course is not intended to be. It does have points of interest - given Herbert was writing @1632 it offers insights into country life of those times and how a parson was perceived by others.
"The country parson is a lover of old customs, if they be good and harmless; and the rather, because country people are much addicted to them, so that to favour them therein is to win their hearts, and to oppose them therein is to deject them."
However, " ....answers (from the congregation. i.e. Amens etc) are not to be done in a hudling, or slubbering fashion, gaping, or scratching their head, or spitting even in the midst of their answer."
