The Poetry of George Herbert

314 Pages·1975·7.14 MB·English

by  Helen Vendler

The Poetry of George Herbert
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The Elixir, from the Williams manuscript,
with revisions in Herbert's hand
THE POETRY OF
HELEN VENDLER
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
and
London, England
'975
Copyright © 1975 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-16803
ISBN 0-674-67959-8
To Morton Berman
Literae hoc debent tibi
Qttets me educasti.

Acknowledgments
Douglas Bush and the late Rosemond Tuve were, among my teachers,
those whose attachment to Herbert reassured my own.
I am grateful to the American Philosophical Society, the Boston
University Graduate School, the American Council of Learned So-
cieties, and the Guggenheim Foundation for grants aiding in the compo-
sition of this book; and to Professors Morton Berman, Harold Bloom,
Marie Borroff, Reuben Brower, and Douglas Bush for sponsoring me
for those grants.
The frontispiece appears by the kind permission of the Librarian of
Dr. Williams's Library, London, and of the Renaissance English Text
Society, which will reproduce the Williams manuscript in facsimile.
Chapters ι and 2 have been previously published, in Ariel 1 (April
1970), pp. 54-70, and in Forms of Lyric, ed. Reuben Brower (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1970). Permission to reprint is grate-
fully acknowledged.

Contents
Introduction ι
A Reading of Vertue y
Alternatives: The Reinvented Poem 25
Beauty in Discovery: Emblems and Allegories 57
Imitators and Adapters 100
"My God, I Mean Myself": Liturgical and Homiletic
Poems 137
Configurations and Constellations: Ethical, Discursive,
and Speculative Lyrics 180
Fruit and Order: Formal Patterns 202
Conflicts Pictured 231
Notes 277
Index 2QQ