George Herbert Questions and Answers
George Herbert
What is the theme of "The Forerunners," a poem by George Herbert?
The theme of this poem is that growing old is difficult because a person loses their looks and their abilities. Faith in God, however, can provide some consolation during these changes. The speaker...
George Herbert
Explain "Death," a poem by George Herbert.
For Christians, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ converted death from an ending into a beginning. Due to Christ’s sacrifice and subsequent rising from the dead, death has been...
George Herbert
Please explain "Discipline," a poem by George Herbert.
George Herbert is a metaphysical poet whose poems are built around conceits that compare things in surprising ways and that extend through the whole poem structurally and thematically holding it...
George Herbert
Please explain "The Agonie" by George Herbert.
Herbert's "The Agonie" (1633) is a meditation on "Sinne and Love," the two subjects Herbert feels it would "more behove" philosophers to measure than all the other elements—described in the opening...
George Herbert
Please explain "Life," a poem by George Herbert. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181057
The word "meta" means to occupy two positions. In Herbert's poetry, as well as many other metaphysical poets, applying natural law to abstract thought was a technique used to bring forth more...
George Herbert
Please explain "Aaron," a poem by George Herbert.
George Herbert's poem "Aaron" is a reflection of Herbert's ordained role in the Church of England and his struggles with a faith-related calling. In the poem, the speaker comments on the clothing...
George Herbert
Discuss George Herbert as a metaphysical religious poet.
The metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century broke away from the Elizabethan poets. Elizabethan poetry is characterized by regular meters and rhyme schemes, as well as easily accessible...
George Herbert
Please explain "The Pearl," a poem by George Herbert.
"The Pearl" refers to the Biblical passage Matthew 13.45-46. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchantman, seeking goodly pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went...
George Herbert
Please explain "Jordan II," a poem by George Herbert.
In "Jordan II," Herbert writes of the difficulty of writing poetry. In the first stanza, he describes how beautiful his words, lines, and metaphors seem to him when they first roll off his quill....
George Herbert
Please explain "Man," a poem by George Herbert.
Herbert, in this poem, creates a sense of cohesion by writing cyclically, beginning and ending with the same idea: that God, having put so much time and energy into His creation, Man, should come...
George Herbert
Please explain "Mortification," a poem by George Herbert.
In attempting to understand the poem, it's necessary to know what Herbert means by "mortification." Essentially, he's referring to the conscious suppression of our bodily desires and appetites. We...
George Herbert
What are some similarities and differences in the ways John Donne and George Herbert treat religious experience in...
John Donne and George Herbert are two of the greatest religious poets in the English language. As might be expected, their religious poems reveal a number of similarities, including the following:...
George Herbert
Please explain "Vanitie," a poem by George Herbert.
In the first stanza, the narrator describes the astronomer who studies the planets and stars, working to understand them on an intellectual level. He watches them and studies their movements, as...
George Herbert
Please explain "Jordan (I)," a poem by George Herbert.
Herbert's "Jordan (I)" is very difficult to understand because understanding the poem depends completely upon understanding the allusions that pepper the poem, the allusions that are scattered...
George Herbert
Please explain "A Dialogue," a poem by George Herbert.
In "A Dialogue," Herbert presents a conversation between man and his saviour where man argues that because he is so full of sin that he is not worth being loved by his God. From man's perspective,...
George Herbert
Please explain "Denial," a poem by George Herbert.
George Herbert (1593-1633) was a metaphysical poet who wrote in the 1600s along with John Donne (1572-1631). Metaphysical poems have certain characteristics, one of which is extended sometimes...
George Herbert
Please explain "Prayer," the poem by George Herbert.
In "Prayer," Herbert juxtaposes a series of images and allusions to spirituality and the Christian Church. Beginning with the first line, the "banquet" implies a feast which has a variety of...
George Herbert
Please explain "The Temper," a poem by George Herbert.
The title of this poem reflects a vision of God as somebody who carefully works on humans to prepare them for heaven. The word "temper" refers to the way that metal is improved by heating and...
George Herbert
Please explain this stanza from George Herbert's "Death" in close detail: "We lookt on this side of thee, shooting...
In this stanza, George Herbert uses a seventeenth-century poetic device known as a metaphysical conceit. A conceit is any extended metaphor or simile that is extreme but genuine. They are often...
George Herbert
Compare and contrast the themes of Herbert's religious poems "Easter Wings" and "The Collar."
One similar theme that the poems share is the hope of Christ. In "Easter Wings," it is the resurrection of Christ who provides the speaker with eternal hope. Although Adam's sin "foolishly" lost...
George Herbert
Are George Herbert's poems religious?
When the young George Herbert, then a student at Cambridge University, sent his mother a New Year’s gift of two sonnets he’d written, he made a vow to her in the accompanying letter. In that...
George Herbert
What is the overall meaning of the poem "Mortification" by George Herbert?
In the Christian religion, mortification refers to the deliberate suppression of our bodily appetites, passions, and desires. In doing so, it is hoped that the individual believer may turn from the...
George Herbert
Help me paraphase the poem "Redemption" by George Herbert.
Paraphrasing serves two purposes. The first purpose may be to summarize a text or poem for discussion or for studying the meaning, underlying metaphor and theme, etc. The second is to aid in...
George Herbert
Are the poems of George Herbert on Affliction controversial?
They are not controversial. In fact, it was rather typical, in Herbert's time, for authors to write about spiritual journeys that included moments of backsliding into sin, doubting one's faith, and...
George Herbert
How would George Herbert's "The Flower," compare with Henry Vaughn's, "Unprofitableness"?
Both of these excellent poems use the central conceit of comparing the speaker to a flower to describe their relationship with God and the way that God tends and nurtures them, as if he were a...
George Herbert
I would like to know which poems of Baroque poets Herbert and Gryphius are the easiest to compare in terms of the...
This is an interesting topic you suggest. Baroque (1600-1750) poets George Herbert (1593-1633, England) and Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664, Germany) wrote on such vastly different subjects that...
George Herbert
George Herbert Love III . love bade me welcome ..........please explain and paraphrase this poem ?
This is a love poem, but it is about the love of God. Love called to me, yet I was reluctant (my soul drew back), the author says. What drew him back was the guilt of his sin. But Love (God) drew...