Virtue | 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.
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.
George Herbert's much anthologized and annotated "Vertue" has been generally recognized as what Arnold Stein labels it, "one of the purest lyrics in the language," and as "Herbert's poetry at its best" in the words of Louis L. Martz. Its deliberate architecture has been much praised. For M. M. Mahood its form of three statements plus a counter-statement makes it...
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