George Herbert

George Herbert (1593-1633) was a Welsh-born English poet, priest, and devotional writer associated with metaphysical poetry. His major work is The Temple, a posthumously published collection including poems such as Love, The Collar, Easter Wings, and The Pulley. He also wrote the prose manual A Priest to the Temple, or The Country Parson. George Herbert matters because he made religious struggle intimate, musical, and formally inventive. His poems turn prayer, rebellion, humility, vocation, and grace into shaped language, often using visual form, paradox, and plain speech together. As a parish priest at Bemerton, he became a model of pastoral seriousness. His quotes endure because they connect greatness, smallness, lawsuits, compromise, mortality, and spiritual self-knowledge with a voice that is gentle but exacting. His poems still make devotional inwardness feel exact, shaped, and humane.

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