Virtue | Criticism

  • Neil Heims

    Heims is a writer and teacher living in Paris. In this essay, he attempts to show how a contemporary reader might approach Herbert's early-seventeenth-century poem "Virtue."

  • Suzanne McDonald

    In the following essay, McDonald argues that "Virtue" is an Easter poem celebrating the dual nature of Christ, as both a temporal and an eternal figure.

  • Kathleen M. Swaim

    In the following essay, Swaim argues that the "season'd timber" of "Virtue" is a reference to charcoal and in opposition to the coal mentioned in the poem's penultimate line.

  • Helen Vendler

    In the following essay, Vendler compares "Virtue" with other poets' rewrites of Herbert's original and analyzes the original in an effort to understand the pattern of Herbert's thought in writing it.