![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It tells how the birds and beasts were assembled to present gifts to the Virtues, gifts that were to be distributed by the most important, and most Christian virtue of them all, Humility. "Humilitie" is not a prayer but a parable that might almost have been composed by Aesop. We're still gripped when that intense but unaffected voice utters a personal prayer. He must have had a great gift, and a great ear, for conversation. For all his artistry and learning, Herbert has a plain-speaking quality, and perhaps that is why, in a secular age, his poetry remains compelling. In imagery they draw heavily on the Bible, of course, but also on science, architecture, music, law, sports such as falconry and bowls, and even card games. Those beautiful symmetrical stanzas, composed of lines of varying metrical length, move across the mind like faint echoes of madrigals, and must be the closest English formal verse has ever come to music. Many are in structures of the poet's own devising. In form, they range from shaped poems, such as Easter Wings, to simple hymn-like quatrains and sonnets. Herbert's 160 poems, collected into a single, posthumously published collection, The Temple, are all devotional, yet their variety is extraordinary. ![]()
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